


Help Not Wanted

by TykTrope



Series: Legatum [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Cannibalism, Comedy, Dark Comedy, Death, Dramedy, Fantasy, Fantasy Cast, Gay Sex, Goblins, Gore, M/M, Male Homosexuality, Ogres, Rimming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 11:25:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 48,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18314426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TykTrope/pseuds/TykTrope
Summary: When a group of goblins find themselves in desperate need of money, they start taking various jobs around a local town, unaware that one particular job could potentially put all of their lives in jeopardy.





	1. Don’t Wake Up

**Author's Note:**

> All right, so here's the next installment of the Legatum series! Like The Green Wanderer, this story is self-contained, so there's no need to read The Green Wanderer if you have no desire to.
> 
> This story is about a group of goblins all trying to raise money by taking various jobs around a local town. After several wacky--and occasionally fatal--hijinks ensues, they soon find one job that may be promising. It also may lead to the death of them all.
> 
> With that outta the way, enjoy the story. :)

Flies. That was always the first sound that woke him up. No matter where he went or where he and the other goblins slept, it always seemed to be the flies that woke him up. The greenish-gray-skinned goblin’s eyes gradually opened up, and he slowly moaned as he moved his arms and legs. After hearing the rustling and feeling the sludge around his feet, the goblin looked down and could see a few watery black bags. When he wiped some of the sleep from his eyes and slowly woke himself up, he realized that he was sleeping around a few garbage bags. Even better, someone nonchalantly dumped leftover food all over him. Which would’ve been fine, if it hadn’t rained last night. The goblin moaned as he gradually stood up, his legs shaking as his short, three-and-a-half-foot-tall body moved around the bags. He slowly opened his large mouth and yawned, showing off his nasty yellow teeth and his slobbery tongue inside. The naked goblin grunted after stretching and set his arms at his side, moments before he looked to his left and spotted another goblin who was a full four feet tall standing near a wall and squatting a bit. 

It wasn’t until he looked down behind the goblin, and at the goblin’s large buttocks, that he realized he was defecating. The taller goblin exhaled after finishing, before he reached backwards and slapped his right buttock so hard it jiggled slightly. Then he looked over his shoulder and grinned.

“Enjoyin’ the view?”

The shorter goblin just grimaced. After the taller goblin finished, he chuckled and turned around, walking towards the smaller one. The shorter goblin blinked as he stared at him, gazing at the black hairs spread around his chiseled chest. The muscles in his arms and legs were a lot more noticeable and bulky compared to other goblins, most of whom were either skinny or fat from overeating. His chin was covered in fuzzy black hair, but he was nearly bald-headed. The only portion of hair on his scalp was a short patch of black hair that vertically ran along the center of his scalp. The shorter goblin reached up and felt his hair too, still remembering that he had the exact same kind of hairstyle. It wasn’t until the taller goblin was standing in front of the shorter one, with his abs in his face, the scent of his musk flaring his nostrils, and his flaccid penis dangling between his knees, that the shorter goblin felt emasculated.

“Had a good sleep mate?” the taller one asked.

“Groshlar, we’re in a pile of trash,” the shorter one responded.

The tall one laughed and scratched at his chest. “That we are, mate! That we are! Ain’t like it’s the first time though!”

The shorter goblin rubbed his eyes. “Fuck happened last night?”

“Hehe, we had lots of fun is what happened! Saw ya gettin’ spit-roasted by the fire, squealing like a goddamn hog!”

The shorter goblin snorted and scowled. “Yeah. And I heard you cryin’ like a li’l bitch when that minotaur shoved his cock up your ass. What, your ass not wide enough to handle a bovine?”

Groshlar snarled as he leaned down and got in the shorter goblin’s face. “Fuck do you know?”

The short goblin groaned and backed away, scowling. “Augh, I know your breath stinks! Damn—we’re surrounded by all this trash and I can _still_ smell it!”

Groshlar grinned. “Not like yours smells any better. ‘Sides, this just goes to show how ‘potent’ it is! Eventually you’ll get so used to it that you’re gonna be _begging_ to kiss me one day!”

Before the short goblin could move back further, Groshlar opened his mouth and exhaled again, prompting the shorter beast to roughly shove Groshlar away. He laughed jovially while the short goblin groaned.

“Go wake up the others while I go, err, find my clothes. Maybe you can use that breath of yours to do it.”

Groshlar smirked at the shorter goblin before he turned around and walked over to three other goblins who were sleeping in the trash. One of them had bright green skin and was snoring noisily, his mouth wide open as saliva gradually dribbled down his mouth. Groshlar kicked him in the side of his head, and the goblin snorted and sniffled as he opened his eyes.

“Agh…fuck you want, mate?”

“Get up.”

Groshlar didn’t wait for a reply; he headed over to the next goblin, a chubby yellow-skinned creature who was cuddling up next to a giant trash bag. Groshlar kicked him in the head too, and the beast shouted and immediately sat up.

“I’m up, I’m up, I’m up—we gettin’ attacked by humans again? S’goin’ on?”

“Nothin’. Just get your fat ass up and get dressed.”

As the yellow goblin grunted and got to his feet, Groshlar came across the final goblin, another light-skinned green beast who had a red beard and red sideburns on his face. Groshlar smirked to himself as he crouched down, looking at the goblin sleeping silently. Then he reached over and pinched his long, pointy nose, closing off his air supply. The red-bearded goblin snorted several times before his eyes shot open and he erratically thrashed his arms in the air. When Groshlar knew he was awake, he took his hand away, and the goblin sat up gasping for air. 

“Good, you’re up. Now get dressed.”

The red-bearded goblin snarled as he looked at Groshlar. “The fuck, Groshlar?! You couldn’t just snap your fingers or something?!”

Groshlar shrugged. “Was either that or I use my breath like Grovmar wanted. Figured the latter option would knock you back out though.”

Shortly after Groshlar woke up the last goblin, Grovmar returned, now clad in a pair of ripped dark blue trousers held up by a single string and a brown wool shirt. He huffed as he stepped around the garbage and swatted some flies away before he stuffed his hands into his pockets.

“Shit…shit! Goddamn it—think I lost all my coins,” he exclaimed, looking around frantically. “Everyone check your pockets. You got any coins on ya?”

The chubby yellow goblin finished putting on his beige trousers, grunting as he tried to tie his string without his corpulent gut getting in the way. After he did, the goblin looked within his trousers, only pulling out lint.

“Sorry. Got nothing.”

“What about you, Groshlar?”

Groshlar grunted as he bent down and grabbed his dark gray sleeveless vest. He slid it on his body and left it open before he looked at his black trousers and moved his hands through his pockets.

“Got a dead beetle. Think we could buy some rum with that?”

Grovmar groaned and rolled his eyes before snapping his fingers and pointing at the light green goblin with a scar on his face.

“Thurrgar. You got some silver on you, right?”

The scarred goblin scratched his face before he straightened out his red shirt and searched the pockets of his baggy gray pants. “No, I don’t. Them minotaur fags ain’t cheap, y’know. Surprised they didn’t bite our cocks off when we told ‘em we ran outta coins.”

Grovmar swallowed before he sheepishly looked over at the red-bearded goblin. He wore a stained white shirt with no sleeves on it, and a pair of dark blue shorts made of wool.

“Hey, don’t look at me. They were serving stilio ale there; you know I had to buy us all a pint!”

Grovmar groaned and smacked his forehead. “So we got no coins on us?”

“Why do you think we slept outside in the garbage? We couldn’t afford to rent out any beds!” Thurrgar pointed out.

“So—” Grovmar grunted as he swatted away a few more flies. “Wonderful. No food, no place to stay, and no coins.”

Groshlar shrugged. “Least we can still suck each other’s cocks off.”

Grovmar glared at Groshlar as the taller, bearded goblin laughed. He exhaled with a huff as he stomped his way out of the garbage and back onto the main road, wiping some of the crud off his clothing.

“C’mon, let’s head to the forest. Guess we’re eating nuts ‘n’ berries for dinner.”

The red-bearded goblin groaned and frowned. “Damn it…I wanted flapjacks drizzled in honey.”

“Yeah? Well, you should’ve thought about that before you bought that scorching beer last night, Krumvell.”

Krumvell smirked. “You mean before it burned your tongue and had you screamin’ hysterically?”

Grovmar listened as the four other goblins laughed at him. He just snarled with frustration and continued to stomp down the road, not waiting for his fellow goblin companions to follow him.

______________________________________

Whether they liked it or not, the five goblins chose to stick together. As soon as Grovmar disappeared into the woods, the other four goblins’ stomachs began to growl. And after a failed attempt at chasing down and killing a stray dog so they could feast on its flesh, the four short creatures hurried into the woods and eventually picked up on Grovmar’s tracks. Once the five of them were together, they arrived around a series of giant trees that were growing pecans, many of which had already fallen to the ground. The five goblins were busy rummaging around the trees, picking up an assortment of pecans and cracking the shells open to extract the kernel from within. Groshlar, however, was picking up any of the pecans he saw and immediately shoving them into his mouth, crunching noisily on the shells.

“Grosh,” said Grovmar. “You’re supposed to break the shells _first_.”

“You’re supposed to break the shells first,” Groshlar repeated, in a nasally mocking voice. “It’s food. I can eat this shit however the fuck I want.”

As Groshlar started crunching on another pecan, he shouted and felt something in his mouth dislodging. He rolled his tongue around his cheeks for a moment before spitting on the ground and grimacing.

“Fuckin’ hell. That’s the third time this month!” he shouted.

Grovmar glared at the splotch of spit on the ground and blinked. “Well. Maybe if you ate properly, you wouldn’t keep chipping your teeth. Give it a couple years; you’ll have a mouth no different from all those old farts who can’t even piss right.”

Thurrgar could sense the hostility growing between Groshlar and Grovmar. Rolling his eyes, the light green goblin exhaled as he bent down next to a tree and picked up a mushroom from the ground.

“Look, it’s early in the morning; you two are just cranky and tired. Grovmar and the rest of us will eat the pecans. Groshlar, you can eat all these mushrooms.”

“Fuck shrooms,” Groshlar snarled, before turning and looking at the fungus in Thurrgar’s hand. “And I ain’t puttin’ _that_ in my mouth!”

“Why not?”

Grovmar slowly approached Thurrgar and squinted as he gazed at the fungus he was holding. It looked like a standard mushroom cap, but there were blue spots all over the cap, and the stem was purple.

“Err…Thurrgar? _Where_ did you get that?”

“On the ground, by that tree over there. Why?”

“You just randomly picked up a mushroom off the ground?”

Thurrgar raised an eyebrow. “Yeah…s’a mushroom. Those are edible, right?”

“Not _all_ of them! Just lookit that thing; I’m getting a rash already!”

“No, Grovmar. That rash is a result of never bathing. We all got one.”

“Thurrgar, you’re not eating that. You’re gonna get sick!”

“I agree,” Groshlar added. “I’m not sleepin’ next to you if you’re gonna whine all night about how you can’t stop squirtin’ bloody, runny feces all over your legs.”

Thurrgar exhaled. “It’s a fuckin’ mushroom! Nothing—look, I’ll show you.”

Before Groshlar or Grovmar could stop him, Thurrgar shoveled the odd-looking shroom into his mouth and started to chew. He swallowed the fungus after crushing it with his teeth and exhaled.

“See? You did all that whining—”

Thurrgar coughed twice with his mouth wide open. He sniffed and shook his head, shortly before he coughed again in the same tone, sounding as if he was trying to expel the mushroom from his gullet. Thurrgar grunted and rubbed his throat a bit, seconds before he broke out into a violent coughing fit. Groshlar and Grovmar backed away as Thurrgar fell to his knees. Mere seconds later, his eyes turned red. Thurrgar tried to speak, but his throat abruptly started to close, and he found it hard to breathe. Small blue spots started to form all over Thurrgar’s head, and he emitted wheezing, whimpering noises.

_____________________________________________

“Okay, so what have we learned today?” Grovmar asked, as he stood in front of Thurrgar’s makeshift grave.

The remaining three goblins all looked down at the grave sheepishly, timidly kicking at the soil and averting Grovmar’s stern eyes. Groshlar eventually looked up at Grovmar and scratched at his beard.

“Don’t eat random shit off the ground?”

“DON’T EAT RANDOM SHIT OFF THE GROUND!” Grovmar bellowed.

Grovmar exhaled with frustration as he shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his giant nose. He shook his head slowly, while Krumvell pushed the tips of his index fingers together and blinked a few times. As Grovmar opened his eyes, Krumvell raised his left hand.

“What if it’s on the floor?”

Grovmar glared at Krumvell. And then smacked him so hard he shouted and fell down.

_______________________________________

“Y’see him?” Grovmar asked.

Groshlar nodded and cracked his knuckles. “I got this, Grov. Y’all wait here; I’ll be back shortly.”

“So what are we gonna do? Just sit here with our thumbs up our asses?” asked the chubby yellow goblin.

Groshlar smirked. “No, Bunng. I expect you to sit here with your tongue in your asses.”

Bunng scoffed after hearing Groshlar’s comment, and the muscular goblin eventually wandered out into the middle of the road and began to follow his target. As Groshlar moved down the road, he gazed around the town just to ensure that no one was watching him. The area that the goblins were in wasn’t very large, especially compared to other towns or even cities within the country. Groshlar could see several houses all lined up next to one another; some were made of wood, stone, or even bricks, and packed with all sorts of humans and other individuals. Others were mainly small shanties, some of which were packed with goblins of his size. Groshlar even spotted a few large boxes on the ground between alleys that goblins or stilios were crammed inside. In the center of town, which was where the target was heading, everything seemed to thrive. Various traveling merchants had their own booths where they sold special merchandise from out of town. Some trolls, elves, and humans alike were teaming up to sell off various knick-knacks found in cities clear across the ocean. Independent merchants aside, the center of town consisted of shops that were built around each other in a half-circle, and a stone statue that had been placed in the center of said half-circle.

Groshlar gazed at the statue for a moment, frowning when he saw what seemed to be a bearded human wearing armor and a cape, looking rather majestic. Gripped firmly between the artificial hands was a long, heavy broadsword—one that people said was used to slay some vile monsters. Groshlar just snorted at the statue before he continued moving forward. The stilio he was following looked like all the rest: a tall, scaly, bipedal reptilian beast who wore clothing like various other races in the world. Groshlar stared at the yellow-scaled, barefooted reptile wearing only blue trousers and listened to him hiss and stomp around. The greenish-gray goblin squinted, wondering where the target was. And then it occurred to him that the goblin would have to be a bit more direct. Smirking, Groshlar hurried forward, and squeezed the creature’s right buttock. He yelped and immediately turned around, panting as his slit-like pupils beamed down on him.

“Fuck you doin’?!” the lizard asked, his voice watery and raspy.

The hairy goblin looked up at the stilio and chuckled as he curled the fingers on his right hand. “Got a real toned ass back there, lizard-boy! Heh, you wanna go somewhere more private?”

“I’m not a faggot you twat!”

Groshlar chuckled as he walked forward and groped the lizard again, this time vigorously moving his big hands around the area between the lizard’s thighs and around his waistline.

“Oh, it’s all right; no one’s gotta know. I can keep a secret.”

Groshlar shouted when the stilio punched him to the ground, and immediately afterwards kicked him in his stomach. As Groshlar curled up in the soil groaning, the stilio spat against Groshlar’s oversized, pointy left ear and stomped away.

“Fuckin’ faggot,” he hissed, loud enough for Groshlar to hear.

After Groshlar overcame the pain, he coughed a few times and sniffled, shaking his head. When the goblin stood up, he looked down in his right hand and smirked, now carrying a small brown bag that rattled when he shook it. Groshlar strutted his way over to the other three goblins and grinned as he held up the bag.

“You got it?” Grovmar asked.

“Course I got it. Got ta feel how thick his cock was too, so it’s a win for everybody!”

“Good. Let’s head to the inn ‘fore all the flapjacks are gone.”

______________________________________

The four goblins all sat down on separate stools within the tavern, their feet dangling and not touching the floor. Groshlar removed the sack of coins from his pocket while the red-bearded goblin looked around the inn checking for suspicious characters. Some knights were eating at a booth with their helmets off, mumbling to themselves as they chewed on their delicious meals. An elven archer was sitting across from a hooded figure whose face was hidden; she seemed more interested in chatting with the individual as opposed to consuming the plate full of veggies and meat in front of her. A yellow-skinned orc sat alone near one of the windows, slurping and chewing cacophonously as he devoured a colossal plate full of ribs from different creatures. There were all sorts of shady, possibly threatening individuals inside of the inn. But Krumvell didn’t care, because they were all too busy devouring delectable food that he wanted to cram into his mouth as well. After merely glancing at the people occupying the inn, Krumvell turned back around and found himself looking at one of the bartenders, a human being with a large brown moustache and beard wearing an apron.

“So. Dining together?”

Groshlar nodded before he smirked and held up the small pouch of money. “And I’m paying!”

“Gotcha. So what’ll it be for you four?”

“Uhhhh…” Bunng scratched his chin as he smelled all of the food being made in the kitchen. “I’ll have the—”

“FLAPJACKS!” Krumvell shouted. “Don’t care what you put in ‘em or how they’re made. Just give us all a tall stack of flapjacks! And drizzle ‘em in honey.”

The human being nodded. “No problem. Heh, didn’t know you goblins had a sweet tooth. You know the drill: money up front.”

Groshlar untied the pouch and tilted it upside-down onto the bar, dumping out the contents. After all the contents came out, Groshlar shoved the coins forward with his hands and lifted them up. The bartender looked down at the coins before he frowned and looked back up at Groshlar.

“Sir?”

“Mm?”

“There’s eight coins here.”

The four goblins frowned nearly in unison. Groshlar examined the coins again and stammered. “Wh—only eight? I thought I stole—err, um, well…that’s still sufficient, right?”

“Yes, but these coins are all _copper_ , sir,” the bartender said, before he lifted one coin and nonchalantly snapped it in half. “And from the looks of it, they’re so rusted and brittle that their currency is essentially useless now.”

Krumvell whined, his ears lowering a bit. Grovmar smacked his hand against his forehead. Bunng slammed his head against the bar and groaned in a muffled tone.  
“But…but I wanted flapjacks,” Krumvell whined.

“I can’t serve you flapjacks if you pay me with broken coins,” the bartender explained.

“Pweeeeeeeeessssssssssseee?”

“No.”

Groshlar stammered. “Ah—forget the flapjacks, Krum! Look, sir, you gotta give us something. We’re starving here, and we’re actually giving you the decency to _pay_ for our meal, as opposed to sneaking around the back and stealing it.”

“Only because everyone in this town knows that if you steal, we hack off your hand.”

Groshlar was very glad that the stilio never found out that he stole his money from him. Then again, now that Groshlar knew how much money he had, he could see why he didn’t bother trying to reclaim it.

“This has to pay for _something_ , right? We’ll settle for a fried egg sandwich at this point.”

The bartender nodded. “Oh yeah, this’ll pay for something.”

____________________________________

Everyone sat outside the inn with scowls on their faces, chewing and grumbling to themselves as they held their spoons and bowls in front of them. Grovmar sniffed as he looked inside his bowl, staring at the grayish, chunky contents and a few cubic pieces of starchy vegetable that wasn’t even mashed or sliced. It seemed like the chef merely tossed all the vegetable chunks inside and handed the food over to the goblins and told them to leave.

“So…y’all enjoying your, um…” Groshlar picked up a spoon full of the grayish contents. Then he sighed as he tilted the spoon over, dumping the contents back out into his bowl. “Plain, butter-less porridge with potato chunks thrown in?”

“I don’t taste any honey,” Krumvell grumbled.

“Yes, you’ve made that clear. Now shut your ass and keep eating.”

The group of goblins ate in silence, occasionally coughing or grumbling as they tried to shovel the tasteless meal down their throats. After the four of them finished, they casually tossed the bowls and spoons into the same pile of trash bags they were sleeping in earlier, as opposed to returning the bowls back to the inn. Bunng wiped his mouth off before belching and exhaling.

“So. What now? We’re outta money again and we’re gonna be hungry in another few hours.”

“May as well steal our next meal. Maybe travel to a new town if we get caught,” Krumvell suggested.

“Good idea! Maybe we’ll visit that one restaurant—”

“We’re not stealing anything else!” Grovmar shouted.

Krumvell blinked. “Why not?”

“Did you not just hear what that human said? If we get caught stealing shit, they’re gonna cut our hands off! Or kill us for all we know!”

“Then we won’t let ‘em catch us,” Groshlar smirked.

“That’s not the point! How many times have we gotten in trouble over doing reckless shit? How many times have we almost died because we did something stupid?”

“Thurrgar _did_ die this morning because he ate a bad mushroom off the ground,” Bunng pointed out.

“THAT’S WHAT I’M SAYING! Gods—it won’t be long ‘fore we end up in a grave too if we keep this up! Is that seriously what all of you want? To end up like Thurrgar, dying because you did something idiotic that easily could’ve been avoided?”

“We’re goblins, Grov. S’how our lives work,” Groshlar pointed out.

“Sure, yeah, fine. We’ll just keep doin’ the same shit every day ‘til we die and do nothing of value with our lives. Great idea, Grosh.”

Grov huffed and kicked at a rock, watching as the small pebble flew through the air and clonked against a gaslight. He stuck his hands in his pockets and walked away from the group, heading over to an abandoned alley so he could have some time to himself. Groshlar looked back over at Bunng and Krumvell and held up a hand to them.

“Just stay here. I’ll get him.”

Krumvell and Bunng leaned against one of the unlit gaslights and waited patiently for the greenish-gray goblins to return. When Groshlar entered the alley, he spotted Grovmar leaning against the brick wall, kicking against the dirt multiple times and scowling. Groshlar approached the shorter goblin and exhaled as he stuck his hands in his pockets too.

“Look, why are you like this? Didn’t we have a good time last night? Didn’t you _enjoy_ what we did last night? I didn’t hear you whining when two werewolves were ramming their cocks into you simultaneously.”

“Yes, Grosh, I enjoyed last night. I enjoyed _one_ night over the last several weeks.”

“Shouldn’t you be _grateful_ for that night? We finally caught a break; there’s nothing to complain about!”

“We spent one night getting intoxicated and participating in an orgy. The very next day, we woke up in trash, and Thurrgar died.”

Groshlar blinked. “Okay, well, if you wanna look at it from a whiner’s perspective, sure. And we’ve only known Thurrgar for three weeks; who gives a shit?”

“Groshlar, I’m tired. I’m tired of other people looking down on us. I’m tired of just wandering around to various towns, stealing food, and _hoping_ that no one or nothing kills us.”

Groshlar shrugged. “S’called life, Grov.”

“No, that’s called just _barely_ surviving. How much longer you think it’s gonna be before our bodies finally give out? If we all died today, you really want to die knowing you spent your last day doing, what? Eating plain porridge? Sleeping in rancid garbage? Watching one of your friends die because he ate something he knew he shouldn’t have eaten?”

Groshlar huffed. “Obviously my opinion doesn’t matter, and neither does Krumvell or Bunng’s opinions. So please continue to stand here and whine about what _you_ want.”

“I just…I just want us to do better, Groshlar. That’s what our parents wanted. Isn’t that what you want too?”

“I want my brother to stop bitching about everything not going his way in life.”

Grovmar didn’t say anything. He just blinked and slowly looked back down at the ground, while Groshlar scoffed.

“I’ll be waiting alongside Bunng and Krumvell. Feel free to go on your own since you’re so much better than us.”

The brothers paused for a moment and glared at each other, moments before Groshlar inevitably turned around and walked over to the two other goblins. Grovmar, knowing he had nowhere else to go, followed him, and regrouped with Bunng and Krumvell. Once he was back with the group, Krumvell scratched his head and cleared his throat.

“Soooooo, you two good?” he asked.

“Yeah, he’s fine,” Groshlar answered, before Grovmar had time to open his mouth.

“Great. Y’know, we could always head back in the woods and look for some travelers. Hell, if we’re lucky we’ll come across some corpses so we don’t gotta worry about ‘stealing’ and getting caught.”

Grovmar shrugged. “Sure, okay,” he responded, sounding uninterested.

“Wonderful! With any luck, maybe they’ll have some food on ‘em they can ‘share’ with us.”

Bunng and Groshlar chuckled after listening to Krumvell’s words, and shortly after they followed the red-bearded goblin down the road. Grovmar exhaled in a melancholic tone and went after them, knowing full well he had no other place to go. He spent most of his time looking down at the ground, wondering why his dirty feet kept moving forward when his brain was telling him to ditch all of these goblins so he could live a better life. Unfortunately, Grovmar also wasn’t paying attention to what was ahead of him, and he grunted when he ran into someone nailing a flyer to a giant wooden board positioned not far from the town square.

“Bah, sorry! Sorry ‘bout that.”

The woman wearing a dark green tunic looked down at the goblin and sniffed. “No worries. S’long as you didn’t steal from me. …You didn’t, right?”

Grovmar shook his head.

“Good.”

After the woman walked away, Grovmar looked up at the large wooden board and saw dozens of sheets of paper pinned onto it. Curious, he reached up and snatched off one of the sheets, and he gradually skimmed all the text to see what the paper said. After he read the message, his eyes widened, and he immediately sprinted over to the group.

“GUYS! I found something!” Grovmar shouted.

“Coins or food?” Krumvell asked.

“Neither. But I know how to get both! See this?”

Groshlar shrugged. “S’a piece of paper. So what?”

“No, no, not just a paper. It’s a contract! Someone posted a buncha these on that giant board over there. There’s random people scattered around the town and in the forest who are offering rewards in exchange for helping them out with specific tasks. D’you know what this means?”

“It means we have to _work_ in order to get food,” Groshlar concluded.

“Helping other people for a reward? How does that sound bad?! Why would you _not_ want to do that?!”

“Because it’s _work_ , Grovmar!”

“Fuck’s sake—this is the only option we have here. We can’t keep stealing; someone’s gonna catch us and either hack off our arms or kill us. None of us know how to cook properly, and two of us aren’t smart enough to read or write. We’re not gonna last in this town surviving on pecans and porridge, and you all know it.”

Krumvell raised his hand. “If we do this contract, does this mean we get more food?”

“Absolutely.”

The red-bearded goblin turned and glared at Groshlar. “Grosh, we’re doing this.”

“NO! We can’t—Bunng, this plan is stupid; you know that right? What if this contract is some-some sort of trap? What if we end up getting kidnapped and sold as sex slaves?”

Bunng glared at Groshlar and blinked. “ _You_ are complaining about turning into a sex slave?”

“Yes! Because sex slaves never get what they want. So our masters are gonna make us fuck _females_! You really wanna be forced to lick some bitch’s cunt every night?”

Bunng scratched his big belly before turning to look at Grovmar. “He’s got a point there. I don’t think it’s worth taking the risk.”

“It says the reward is a diamond,” Grovmar pointed out.

“Grosh, it’s worth taking the risk.”

Bunng, Krumvell, and Grovmar all looked at Groshlar with folded arms and scowled at him, waiting for his response. Groshlar groaned and rolled his eyes.

“Does it say when we get paid?”

“As soon as the contract is finished. And there are multiple contracts up here, Grosh. As soon as we finish, we do another one, get even more rewards! Eventually we won’t ever have to worry about running out of money or coins or anything!”

Krumvell cleared his throat. “It’s three to one. So you can’t even say that Grov is trying to make all of us do what _he_ wants to do either.”

Groshlar exhaled and rubbed his forehead, grumbling. “Fuck it then. Let’s do this one contract, see what happens.”

“Good!” Grovmar exclaimed, before slapping the paper. “We follow the instructions the contractor listed, and nothing will go wrong.”

“That’s what people say before something goes wrong.”


	2. Don’t Assist

The four goblins all stood outside of a cave, wondering when the creature that contracted them would inevitably come outside. Krumvell was fidgeting around with his blue shorts and exhaling as he looked at the sweat stains that were forming around his shirt. Bunng was picking at his belly-button, dragging a nasty long nail against his stomach and scooping out any lint or dirt he found inside. Groshlar was standing in front of the cave with his arms folded and a scowl on his face, his entire face coated with sweat as he felt the sun’s scorching rays beating down on him. And Grovmar was groaning and scratching at his clothing, regretting that he hadn’t stolen a shirt that was made out of material more comfortable than wool. He looked up in the sky and scrunched up his face, gazing at the cloudless atmosphere and the sun seemingly blinding him. When he looked straight ahead at the mouth of the cave, he heard a few faint growls coming from within, and the greenish-gray goblin exhaled with relief.

“Think he’s coming out now,” Grovmar said.

“Explain to me how you know this contractor won’t eat us the second he sees us,” Groshlar inquired.

“We just spent all night sleepin’ in trash. I don’t think he’ll _want_ to eat us.”

“Explain to _me_ how this creature was able to even write on a piece of paper,” Bunng asked.

“I don’t know; maybe he used special magic…ink…stuff. Does that really matter right now?”

“Yes. It does.”

“Bunng, we live in a world full of magic, sorcery, and talking reptiles, rats, and fish people. You’re capable of accepting that, but you’re not capable of believing that this creature wrote words on a paper, or at least found someone to write the contract for him?”

Bunng blinked. “…Well shit. Kinda hard to argue with that logic.” 

The group heard a few more booming noises from inside the cave and saw glowing yellow eyes in the darkness. Slowly and nonchalantly, the beast within made his way out into the fields, stomping on the ground and leaving giant footprints in the soil. Krumvell and Bunng stopped picking at their clothing or bodies, and their eyes dilated as they gazed at the behemoth in front of them. It was a colossal dragon, one with thick, reddish-orange scales covering most of his body and a bright red underbelly. He could’ve easily stepped on the goblins and mistaken them for tiny bugs he squashed, and he wouldn’t have known the difference. The towering winged reptile scraped his claws against the ground before spreading his wings a few times and emitting smoke from his nostrils. He blinked and looked down at the goblins, his head alone much thicker, wider, and taller than all four of them. The dragon lowered his neck and leaned forward, moving his head a bit closer to the goblins. The group instinctively backed away, intimidated by his hulking frame and the large white horns coming out the beast’s head.

“Hey,” he started, his voice deep but calm. “You four saw me contract, yeah?”

Grovmar nodded. “Yeah. So, um…this _is_ legit, correct? You’ve no intention on eating us?”

“I find me own feces tastes better’n you goblins.”

Krumvell narrowed his eyes and blinked. “Thanks for the compliment.”

“Just tell us what we gotta do so we can hurry up and get paid,” Groshlar snarled.

The dragon nodded. “Right. So I came ‘cross some bandits not too long. They wasn’t the best o’ mates, so I decided to have a li’l snack. Thing is, one o’ ‘em had a bloody diamond crammed in their pockets.”

“Okay. So?”

“Damn thing’s stuck ‘tween me teef! Been glued up there for o’er a week now; I can’t get it out! Tried gettin’ other humans an’ smaller creatures t’help me, but y’know how people are when a dragon asks ‘em to go inside his mouth.”

Grovmar raised an eyebrow before he took the contract paper out his pocket and looked at the words again. “Um…you _are_ Mallwyn the Fire Dragon, right? The one with a dire emergency?”

“This _is_ dire! Me gums gon’ get infected ‘less this shit is taken out!”

“But-but the reward says the helper will receive a diamond!” Krumvell complained.

Mallwyn nodded. “That weren’t a lie. You get the diamond out, keep it. Got no use for it anyways.”

Bunng looked at the other three goblins and shrugged. “Hey, diamond’s a diamond. Dunno about you three, but I don’t care if it’s smothered in dragon spit.”

Grovmar nodded. “Exactly. All right, Mallwyn. Open your mouth; one of us will look inside and try to fish it out.”

“No problem.”

The red fire dragon lied flat on the ground and blinked a few times, resting his chin against the soft grass. The four goblins all approached Mallwyn’s giant snout, mere moments before the winged beast opened his mouth wide. All of the goblins were engulfed in steamy hot breath that made their eyes water and their noses burn. Two of them backed away and groaned with disgust, while the other two broke out into a fit of violent coughing and tried covering their noses, but it didn’t help much.

“What the hell crawled in your mouth and died?!” Bunng shouted.

Mallwyn shut his mouth for a moment and blinked twice. “Wot? You blokes ain’t ever smelled dragon breath before?”

“Not _that_ bad!” Groshlar said, plugging his nose.

“Oh. Well, you get used to it after a few seconds.”

Mallwyn opened his mouth again, and the goblins grimaced as they gazed at the saliva dripping from the upper row of teeth. One of them noticed how thick and soggy the tongue looked, while another could see that the teeth looked like yellow stalactites and stalagmites all waiting to clamp down and crush an unsuspecting victim to death. After breaking out into a fit of coughing, Grovmar waved a hand in front of his face and pointed inside.

“Okay—” Grovmar coughed three more times. “Grosh, get in there.”

“Me?! Why the fuck do I gotta get it? This was your idea in the first place!”

“Because out of the four of us, your breath smells the worst. This dragon’s mouth shouldn’t bother you.”

Groshlar turned and glared at Bunng, who immediately held up his hands.

“Hey, I-I can’t do it; I’m too fat! He’s gonna feel my big ol’ belly on his tongue and think I’m some kind of meat snack! You’re all bony and-and muscle-bound and shit; your meat’s too tough for a dragon to enjoy.”

Groshlar snarled and looked at Krumvell. “What about you, shit-head?”

The red-bearded goblin gulped. “I-I-I got hair! Yeah…yeah, that’s it. All this hair could get caught—”

“I got hair too, dumbass. _Actual_ hair, including my beard.”

“Well, you know, um…I, uh…I can’t see well in the dark! Yeah. So…you know. If I wander in there, and walk too far forward, I could slide down into his gullet…yeah.”

Krumvell sheepishly looked down at the ground and pressed his index fingers together. Then he chuckled nervously, fully aware of how indignant Groshlar looked.

“Just do it, Grosh. You’re the tallest anyway. If the diamond’s on the upper roof of his mouth, you’re probably the only one who can reach it,” Grovmar encouraged.

“Tch! Fine. Fuck alla you.”

Groshlar turned and looked at the dragon’s oversized mouth and exhaled. He kept telling himself that it would all be worth it once he finally removed the treasure from the gaping maw. So he took a deep breath and stepped forward, his feet squelching as he walked on the dragon’s soggy tongue. The tall goblin groaned as he felt the saliva soaking around his feet, with some of it even staining the bottoms of his trousers. Gritting his teeth and swearing in his mind, Groshlar moved over to the left side of the dragon’s mouth, looking around at each tooth and checking to see if any of them had something wedged between them.

“Yaah shees annyking?” Mallwyn asked, maw still wide open.

“Urgh…think I found part of someone’s shirt in here,” Groshlar groaned.

“Raaagh shaah. Raaagh shaah!”

“Raagh…oh.”

Groshlar figured out what Mallwyn was saying, and he slowly moved over to the right side of the dragon’s maw. Once again, he bent down and checked to see if anything was jammed between the lower row of teeth, wincing when he accidentally pricked his finger against a jagged tooth. When he looked up at the upper row, however, Groshlar thought he spotted something shiny in the very back end of the dragon’s maw. Groshlar cautiously edged his way further into the maw, his body almost swallowed in the darkness.

“Don’t slip and fall, Grosh! You end up in that dragon’s gut, we ain’t waitin’ ‘til you come back out!” Krumvell shouted.

“Fuck off, Krum! Think I found it actually…”

Groshlar reached up and grabbed a small object that was lodged between two teeth. He clutched it with his right hand, grunting and jerking his arm backwards as he tried to twist and yank it out as hard as he could. The goblin shut his eyes and grimaced when a glob of spit plopped down on his face. He wiped it off quickly before he reached up with both hands and started to jimmy it out.

“Almost…there!”

Groshlar grunted as he took out the object. However, the dragon started to cough and gag, his neck irritated by strands of hair that came off Groshlar’s head. He instinctively closed his maw, with Groshlar still inside. The dragon’s eyes widened, and he immediately stood up and began to gag and retch, tossing Groshlar’s body around his mouth.

“Spit him out! SPIT HIM OUT, DAMN IT!” Grovmar cried.

Mallwyn lowered his head and retched again, seconds before he spat out the goblin, his body splattering on the ground in a pool of warm saliva. Mallwyn backed away and coughed a few times, spitting and shaking his head as he attempted to get the strands of hair from his mouth.

“Whew! Urgh, sorry ‘bout that mate! All that hair ain’t sit well goin’ down me throat.”

Groshlar slowly sat up on the ground, panting and breathing heavily as drool as thick as slime slowly moved down his body. He reached up and wiped off the slobber covering his eyes before standing and huffing. Grovmar timidly looked at his brother and scratched the back of his head.

“Sorry—”

“QUIET,” he growled, so deeply he sounded like a demon.

Mallwyn rolled his tongue around his maw, double-checking to see if Groshlar succeeded in his endeavor. “Hey, it’s gone! Ya got it out mate! Thanks!”

“Just be glad you didn’t accidentally swallow Groshlar. This could’ve…” Bunng stopped talking and leaned forward to examine the object in the tall goblin’s hand. “Um. Wait. This isn’t a diamond.”

Mallwyn blinked. “Hmm?”

Bunng snatched the object from Groshlar’s hand and frowned as he looked at the chipped, bright white bone. “This isn’t even some kind of stone. It’s a rib.”

“Whatcha mean ‘rib’?” Krumvell inquired.

“I mean it’s a bone. It came from an animal’s ribcage—probably a cow by the size of it.”

Groshlar exhaled and shut his eyes. “Because it only makes sense that I went through all of that for fucking nothing.”

Grovmar turned to look up at Mallwyn and gritted his teeth. “You incompetent twat! How the hell did you mistake a diamond for a cow bone?!”

“Well. I ate a cow and those bandits on the same day. I saw one o’ ‘em flaunting it about ‘fore I ate ‘em.”

“And at no point did you think that you _might_ have swallowed the diamond?!”

Mallwyn blinked. “Guess I could’ve. Well…in that case, there’s a big ol’ present for ya in them caves right there. You’ll probably find the diamond…eventually.”

After a brief pause, the dragon sighed and spread his wings wide. “Welp. See ya! Thanks again, goblins!”

There was nothing the goblins could do. None of them had weapons on them. And even if they did, they were mere cockroaches compared to a fire dragon the size of Mallwyn. So they all just stood still and watched as Mallwyn ascended and flew north, his body getting smaller and smaller as he gained more distance from the group of goblins.

“Y’all wanna see how much money the merchant will pay us for that bone?” Groshlar asked smarmily. 

_________________________________

“Two bronze coins. I’m better off just holding onto it,” Bunng said, as he and the other goblins walked away from the merchant’s shop.

The four goblins stopped in front of the town’s wooden contract board again. Grovmar sighed as he, along with Krumvell and Bunng, looked at all the papers. Groshlar was grumbling as he stood near a patch of flowers and wrung out his vest, watching as the dragon spit splashed all over the grass and flowers.

“Fine…so the first contract was a bust. Happens all the time,” Grovmar stated.

“There’s twelve more up here. Maybe one of these other ones will pan out?” Krumvell said optimistically.

The bearded goblin rubbed his chin before he grabbed one of the papers and looked at the letters. “Huh…well, I can make out the word ‘coins’ and ‘missing,’ so at least there’s that. Can’t read the rest though.”

“Lemme see that,” Bunng said, snatching the paper and examining the words. “Huh…apparently a dozen children have gone missing…feared dead…damn. The reward for this is ten thousand platinum coins!”

A wide grin appeared on Krumvell’s face. “We’re _definitely_ taking that contract!”

“Move, bitch,” Groshlar snarled, shoving Bunng to the ground before he snatched the paper away and tossed it aside. “We’re not taking that contract.”

“Why not?! Didn’t you hear the reward?!” Grovmar exclaimed.

“Think about it, brother. Bigger reward means bigger risk. Whoever posted that probably wants us to infiltrate some camp full of cannibalistic orcs or some mountain trolls who fuck the corpses of their enemies. We’re not doing all of that just to find some worthless children.”

“But we can—”

“NO!” Groshlar reached up and snatched another paper from the wall before shoving it in Grovmar’s face. “Read that to me. S’my turn now after the shit I just went through.”

Grovmar straightened out the paper and huffed while Krumvell helped Bunng get off the ground. After he was up, Grovmar began to read.

“‘Name: Wyatt Remmord Jerrinkson. Race: Human. Job: Looking for volunteers to help me with target practice. Location: Pyro Fields. Payment: 250 gold coins.’”

“There, see? Now _that_ sounds more doable,” Groshlar pointed out.

“But the reward is significantly smaller,” Bunng stated.

“So’s the risk. So c’mon, let’s go meet this human and see what he wants.”

As Groshlar began to walk down the road to their destination, the other three goblins gradually followed, curious to see what Wyatt had to offer.

__________________________________

“FUCKING HELL!” Groshlar shouted.

Groshlar and the other three goblins were standing within Pyro Fields, which was composed of hundreds of dead trees that were incapable of growing their leaves back, or looked burnt to a crisp from the raging wildfire that took place many months ago. Standing several yards away from the goblins was a light-skinned man with a light brown beard and short, almost silky hair. After Groshlar stared at the man for a moment, he slowly crouched down and stood back up, turning around to look at the apple that had just been pierced with an arrow.

“The fuck you doin’?! You said you wanted to do target practice!” he yelled.

“This _is_ target practice,” Wyatt said, before holding up his crossbow. 

Bunng shrieked when Wyatt fired his arrow, missing his bald head by millimeters. Shaking and trembling, Bunng slid down to the ground, relieved that the arrow hit the green apple that had been placed on top of his head. Meanwhile, a nervous Grovmar with an apple on his head shook uncontrollably as Wyatt began to back away and reloaded his crossbow.

“Sir? U-um…uh, it-it appears as though you’ve trained enough! Hehehe, you don’t need us no more! YOU CAN PAY US NOW! YOU DON’T—FUCK!!”

Another arrow flew Grovmar’s way. He panicked at the last second and ducked. Miraculously, just as Grovmar ducked, the arrow found its target, lodging itself through the yellow apple and pinning it to the tree behind Grovmar. 

“Fuck—off my mark a bit. Good instinct on ya, goblin! A fraction of a second later, and that arrow would’ve gone through your forehead!”

“This is bullshit,” Groshlar snarled, while Bunng and Grovmar remained on the ground still shaking.

Krumvell, meanwhile, was smacking and mumbling with his mouth full. Wyatt stared at the light green goblin as he devoured the green apple that was on his head, not caring about the sour juices running down his chin.

“Argh, you’re not supposed to _eat_ the apple,” Wyatt said as he approached Krumvell. “You gotta leave it on your head! How else am I gonna practice?”

“Well,” Krumvell said, as he swallowed hard. “You can use fake targets made of straw.”

“EXACTLY! Thank you!” Groshlar shouted. “One of the few smart things to come out your mouth! Listen, Wyatt, or whatever your name is: we’re not letting you use _us_ as target practice. I’m sure it’d be convenient if you did and then you ‘accidentally’ killed us. Wouldn’t have to pay us a single coin then!”

Wyatt scoffed and ran a hand through his hair. “I have to use live targets. Soldiers don’t shoot at dummies; they don’t miss dummies. The threat of accidentally killing innocent people further motivates me to _not_ miss.”

“I’m not letting you take another shot at us,” Groshlar firmly stated.

“But it’s completely—all right, look,” Wyatt said, before setting the crossbow on the ground. “Obviously I’ve upset you. So how’s ‘bout I make it even? I’ll let you shoot an apple off my head, just so we’re both on even terms, all right?”

Groshlar watched as Wyatt walked over to a stump that had a set of apples resting on it. He picked one up and gently set it on his scalp, and then turned around and looked at Groshlar with a smile on his face.

“See? We’re even now! So go on, aim for the apple. And I promise you, I won’t get mad if you hit me by mistake.”

“Really?” Groshlar said, as he bent down and picked up the crossbow.

“Not at all!”

Groshlar gripped the crossbow firmly and aimed at Wyatt. Then he grinned widely and fired, and the bow sailed through the air and struck Wyatt in the neck. The human didn’t even have time to gurgle or cry out in pain before he fell to the ground. Groshlar watched as the apple fell from his head, while Krumvell walked over to Groshlar, still munching on his green apple.

“You missed the target,” he mumbled.

“No, I didn’t.”

____________________________

Bunng, Groshlar, and Grovmar all groaned as they hastily started to dig a grave near the field of burnt trees. The chubby yellow-skinned goblin glared at Groshlar and snorted.

“You didn’t have to kill the bastard,” he growled.

“My finger slipped! Hehe, Grov, you saw!”

“Yeah, I saw,” Grov started. “I saw you pissin’ away all our money! Now we can’t get paid, Grosh!”

Groshlar stopped digging and blinked. “Whatcha mean?”

“I mean it specified on the contract that he’d only pay _after_ the training was finished! He didn’t have a single coin on his body; he probably left it back home, and none of us knows where he lives!”

Groshlar frowned. “Fuck.”

Grovmar snarled as he ran a dirty hand through his hair and huffed. “Let’s just hurry up and bury the body ‘fore someone sees us. There might be some—Krum, what are you doing?!”

Krumvell looked over at the other goblins as he held a half-eaten red apple in his hand. There were several more idly lying about on a stump, the same ones Wyatt had been using to set on the goblins’ scalps.

“Whuh? Free apples!”

________________________________

The four goblins returned to the wooden board, albeit now everyone was scowling at Groshlar instead of Grovmar. Groshlar snorted as he folded his arms.

“Oh c’mon, I had to do it! He almost killed Grov! He was probably gonna kill all of us once we finished anyway!”

“You’d better _pray_ that man didn’t have a family,” Grovmar snarled.

“We buried him nice an’ deep. And it’s not like anyone saw us, so calm your ass down. Now…let’s see what else we got up here.”

Just as Groshlar was about to pick out a contract, Bunng stomped forward and shoved the tall goblin out the way.

“ _I’ll_ pick the next one! Seems like anything the Grollear Brothers come up with only leads to trouble!”

None of the goblins argued with Bunng. They all looked at the yellow beast as he huffed and snatched another contract off the wall. He skimmed it quickly before nodding and sighing.

“Okay, good, this sounds lovely. There’s a scientist who needs ‘test subjects’ to help him with this special concoction he’s been trying to perfect. It even specifies that he wants goblins, and he’s offering each goblin participant five hundred gold coins.”

Krumvell shrugged. “Seems fine with me.”

“Does it say what exactly the concoction is?” Grovmar inquired.

“No. But, y’know, it can’t be anything dangerous if we’re getting paid.”

___________________________________

All of the goblins coughed and spluttered after the scientist tossed a container full of greenish-yellow sludge all over them. Krumvell licked some of the sludge running down his face, while the other goblins wiped the slime from their eyes so they could see properly. Grovmar shook his head and spluttered a few more times, looking around the wide-open grassy field that had no trees around, only a few patches of flowers. Grovmar could see the scientist standing near one of the tents he had set up. The aging human being set down the container he was holding before he looked over at the giant creature that was tied to the ground with a series of stakes. Grovmar noticed that the creature was reptilian and stood on two legs. It looked like a navy blue dragon, but the creature’s “arms” were a set of wide wings.

“And now we wait,” the man said.

Groshlar spat on the ground twice. “Wait for what?”

The scientist ignored him as he held up a journal and an ink pen. “Now this should react with the wyvern’s olfactory senses shortly…”

All of the goblins looked at each other with confusion. Krumvell scratched his bald head while Groshlar and Bunng looked up at the wyvern, watching as the reptile curiously turned its head left and right. At one point, the wyvern leaned forward and sniffed the goblins, only to sneeze and turn its head back around. The scientist swore as he lowered his journal and slid his pen in his pants pocket.

“Drat! Could’ve sworn it would’ve worked on goblins this time…”

“What would’ve worked? What did you just cover us with?” Bunng asked.

The scientist set his journal aside before he walked inside his tent, rummaging around through a few of his personal belongings. Eventually he pulled out two plastic cylindrical containers, one of which was clear, while the other one was blue.

“Bait.”

“WHAT!”

“It’s wyvern bait! I’ve been tinkering with a few special potions—”

“I know what you said! Why the fuck did you cover us with it when there’s a wyvern _right_ there?!”

“Relax, it’s tied down. Besides, it’s needed for warfare! Imagine if you’re facing an entire horde of vicious gnolls or orcs! All you gotta do is crack this container open, dump some of this sludge on a few orcs, and any wyverns within the area will catch wind of it and go berserk! They’ll tear anyone drenched in the bait apart!”

Grovmar exhaled. “I’m assuming you haven’t gotten the kinks worked out.”

The scientist set down one of the containers and rubbed his beard. “Well. That’s what’s so queer about all this. Some potions work on different races. Orcs, ogres, satyrs, gnolls…hell, it might even work on dragons. That’s why I wanted goblins; I wanted to see if this batch would work on you.”

“So you put us all in danger just to test your stupid formula?” Bunng snarled.

“As I said, this wyvern is properly tied down.”

Bunng, in a state of frustration and fury, picked up the container on the ground, took off the cap, and immediately tossed the contents inside all over the scientist’s midriff. He shouted with surprise and coughed, backing away as he was covered in yellow sludge. In less than two seconds, the wyvern snarled and began to drool and flap its wings.

“What was that for?!” the scientist asked.

“I wanted to test the baaaaaaaaait,” Bunng said in a mocking tone.

“But-but I already tested the bait on humans! IT WORKS!”

The wyvern immediately screeched and lunged for the scientist, snapping its jaw repeatedly as it tried to break free from the rope. Grovmar and Krumvell panicked as they looked inside the tent, while Bunng just scoffed.

“But it’s tied dooooooooowwwwwwnnn! You should be just fiiiinnnnne!” he said, in the same nasally mocking tone.

“Don’t you have some kind of repellent?!” Grovmar asked.

“Or at least counter-bait, or some other chunk of meat for the wyvern to eat?” Krumvell added.

The scientist backed away from the wyvern as it kept snapping at him and tugging its feet up against the ropes.

“No…no. But-but no worries. This happened last time; the wyvern will tire itself out, and pass out. Then by tomorrow morning, the effect will wear off; the batch I’m testing today only lasts one day instead of a whole week. So I should—”

The stakes within the ground popped out after the wyvern jerked its feet around enough times. Before the scientist even noticed, the wyvern lunged forward, mouth open wide, and bit down on the human being’s body. The upper half disappeared inside the maw, while the lower half just twitched. The wyvern snarled viciously as it thrashed its head around, and bit down with a meaty crunch. Everything below the scientist’s waist flew from the wyvern’s maw and landed right in front of the goblins with a meaty thud, sending blood spraying against their bodies. Groshlar and Krumvell stared at the goblin with wide eyes, while Bunng looked down at the corpse and blinked.

“Fuck,” he murmured.

Grovmar turned and glared at Bunng before snorting.

“Guess now we gotta go dig a graaaaaaaaaave!” he said, imitating Bunng’s mocking voice.

__________________________________

Krumvell, Grovmar, and Groshlar all grunted as they used a pair of shovels to dig a large hole to dump the body into. Bunng, meanwhile, finished ransacking the scientist’s tent, and exhaled as he came out carrying another container full of the sloshy wyvern bait.

“Bunng, what the hell are you doing? I thought you said there’s no money in the tent,” Grovmar inquired.

“There ain’t. But hey…still bait, ain’t it? Maybe we could sell it to some merchant, earn some coins with it.”

“Or maybe we could pour it all down your ass, see if the fluids clog up your hole so you can’t shit anymore,” Groshlar snarled.

Krumvell looked at Groshlar and blinked. “But that won’t make us money faster.”

“Shut up and keep digging.”

_______________________________________

Bunng’s plan didn’t pan out. When they went to the merchants again, all of them thought they merely poured vomit or urine mixed with moldy food into the container and were trying to sell nothing to earn something. Bunng, still adamant that someone out there might want the bait, still walked around carrying it in his hands. Once again, the four goblins were standing in front of the wooden board, gazing at all the contracts to see which one they could take next.

“My turn now. Seems like all of you have really bad luck, hehe!” said Krumvell.

The red-bearded goblin jumped up and snatched a paper off the board, before handing it over to Grovmar so he could read it.

“‘Name: Tylark Lorrkastar. Race: Stilio. Job: Baker’s assistant. Location: Lorrkastars’ Sweets. Payment: 400 silver coins.’”

“YES!” Krumvell shouted joyously. “See?! First contract I see turned out to be the easiest one!”

“Yes, but silver isn’t worth much more than copper or bronze,” Grovmar pointed out.

“Who cares?! It’s a baker’s assistant! At the very least we’re gonna get free food outta this!”

“He’s got a point, brother,” Groshlar said.

“Even if this stilio tries to trick us or doesn’t pay us, hey. Least we won’t go to bed with nothing but stale porridge and potatoes in our bellies,” said Bunng.

Grovmar sighed. “All right, let’s check it out.”

________________________________________

Grovmar and Groshlar stood inside the bakery, their hands covered in flour. In-between them was a tall stilio with light blue scales covering his body. He looked more like a bipedal salamander with green spots on his smooth body, and he wore regular clothing just like most humanoid creatures on this side of the country. All of them were wearing white aprons, although the Grollears’ aprons were a lot filthier than Tylark’s. The stilio hissed twice, his forked-tongue slipping out his mouth, as he looked down at Groshlar wiping his nose.

“Don’t pick your nose! Can’t have any germs contaminating the cake!”

Groshlar took his finger out his left nostril and sniffled as he looked up at Tylark. “You picked the _wrong_ assistants to help you then.”

Tylark groaned and rolled his eyes. “Fine. You can pick your nose, rub your face, and scratch your feet. But your hands stay far away from your ass and your crotch! Last thing we need is someone finding pubic hair or flaky shit crumbs in their pastries!”

Grovmar took his hand out of his pants the second Tylark stopped talking. The stilio turned and looked down at Grovmar, narrowing his eyes and snarling gently while Grovmar flattened a piece of dough with a rolling pin. Tylark exhaled with frustration, seconds before the bakery door swung open, revealing Bunng and Krumvell holding two bowls.

“All right, we got ‘em!” Bunng shouted.

“Fresh from the ground! These should be enough, right?” Krumvell asked.

Both goblins set their bowls on one of the main tables in the building, and Tylark quickly stopped what he was doing to go look at the contents inside. Each bowl was loaded with two different kinds of mushrooms: one white, and one brown with spots on the cap.

“I told you two to get portobello mushrooms, not…what is this anyway?”

Krumvell shrugged. “Dunno. Looked tasty enough. ‘Sides, we couldn’t find any portobello mushrooms; I had to substitute it for that.”

Tylark picked up one of the mushrooms with a spotted cap and blinked. “Well. Should probably taste it. Too bitter or too bland and this cheese and mushroom cake won’t come out right.”

Tylark tossed the small mushroom in his maw and chewed on it, while Grovmar dropped his rolling pin and glared at Krumvell.

“Krum, _please_ tell me that mushroom didn’t have blue spots on it,” Grovmar groaned.

“Of course not! C’mon, I ain’t that dumb!”

Grovmar exhaled with relief. “Good.”

“It’s got yellow spots on it.”

Grovmar’s eyes widened as he looked at the stilio. Tylark coughed three times. He started emitting wheezing noises and grabbed his throat, acting as if he couldn’t breathe.

“OH, FOR FU—”

________________________________________

The four goblins stood out in the forest, panting as they dug another grave, this time to put Tylark Lorrkastar’s body into. Krumvell could see that his friends were all glaring at him, ready to rip his throat out.

“I’m sorry! Shit, how was I supposed to know those mushrooms were poisonous?”

Bunng bonked Krumvell against the back of his head, and he shouted and tumbled into the grave alongside Tylark. Krumvell groaned a few times as he rubbed his head, only to splutter when he felt soil getting dumped on his body.

“Hey…hey—PLAH! Guys? I’m not dead! You can stop dumping dirt on me!”

Groshlar looked at Grovmar and Bunng and blinked. “If we move quickly, he might suffocate ‘fore he can climb out.”

“Good plan.”

Grovmar, Groshlar, and Bunng began to fill up the grave, not caring that Krumvell was still very much alive and moving around.

“GUYS!”

________________________________________

Groshlar, Grovmar, Bunng, and the dirt-covered Krumvell all sat in front of the board again. Grovmar rubbed his tired eyes and exhaled as he looked at his companions.

“Hey. I got an idea. Let’s take a contract and try not to kill someone this time,” he snarled.

“PLAH!” Krumvell said, spitting out more dirt before he blew some of it out his nostrils. “I agree.”

Bunng lazily stood up and yanked off the first contract he saw. He briefly skimmed over it before sitting back down and exhaling.

“Oh look. Found something,” he said unenthusiastically.

“Do tell,” Groshlar said, in the same flat tone.

“Uhh…some guy wants goblins to eat shit. Says he’ll pay a thousand copper coins.”

Grovmar rolled his eyes. “Wonderful. Nice to know someone is using this board as a means to insult random readers.”

“I’m not exaggerating. There’s a human being who owns a farm nearby, and he’s willing to pay goblins money to devour excrement from his animals.”

“Oh my gods, _you are shitting me_ ,” Grovmar said in disbelief.

“HA!” Krumvell chuckled, after hearing his companion’s swear word.

Bunng handed the paper over to Grovmar, and he began to skim it. “Uh, Dante Remminson…thousand coins…goblins wanted…will pay to watch participants consume animal excrement?!”

“I say we do it,” Bunng stated nonchalantly.

Groshlar exhaled and lazily threw up his arms before letting them slap back down. “Sure, fuck it. Why not?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?! Why would any of you want to engage in coprophagia?!” Grovmar screamed.

“Copo-what-now?” Krumvell asked.

“Eating slurry or feces,” Bunng answered. “And because there is absolutely _no way_ anything can go wrong. At least with this, we won’t have to worry about killing someone or getting killed ourselves.”

“Fecal matter is toxic! We could get some kind of intestinal infection if we eat it!” Grovmar shouted.

Krumvell rubbed his beard. “Well…to be fair, shit is just food, but it’s in a different shape and form. So, _technically_ , we’re getting a free meal out of this.”

“WE ARE NOT EATING ANIMAL SHIT, GODDAMN IT!”

________________________________________

The four goblins all sat down as they consumed the bucket of brown sludge in front of them. Krumvell consumed his sludge with his bare hands, while the other goblins slowly and reluctantly ate from their buckets with spoons. The farmer clad in overalls just stood behind them laughing uncontrollably, appalled and surprised at what the group was doing.

“You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me! I didn’t even expect anyone to answer that contract, let alone actually go through with it!”

Krumvell stopped eating briefly and licked his lips. “We’re very desperate.”

“SHUT UP, KRUM!” Grovmar exclaimed.

Groshlar licked some of the brown sludge from his fingers and smirked as he looked back at the farmer. “Joke’s on you, shit-head. For all that talk about how shit tastes, this is actually pretty damn good!”

The farmer immediately stopped laughing. “What?”

Bunng leaned forward and sniffed the brown substance in his bucket. “Yeah, this doesn’t even _smell_ like shit. What’d you do to it?”

Grovmar looked at Groshlar and Bunng before he dipped his left hand into the brown sludge. He curiously licked some of the substance from his hand and smacked his lips twice.

“…This is sweet. Tastes like there’s sugar in this…cocoa maybe?”

The farmer huffed and stomped forward. “Bullshit. There’s no way—lemme taste that.”

The human, surprisingly, dipped his own finger in Grovmar’s bucket of brown muck. After he licked it clean, he exhaled and smacked his own forehead.

“Damn it, this is melted chocolate!”

Krumvell’s eyes widened. “Are you serious?! Hehehe, well! In that case…”

Krumvell grabbed his bucket, brought it up to his mouth, and tilted his head back, letting all of the sugary goodness slither down his throat and get all over his face and beard. Bunng scratched his head in confusion as he looked up at the farmer.

“I don’t get it. Why would you make a contract to feed goblins melted chocolate? It’s not like we’re allergic to it.”

“This wasn’t supposed to be chocolate! ARGH! I must’ve mixed up the buckets; you must’ve gotten the chocolate ones!”

“Okay, so what happened to the buckets full of shit?”

“I gave it to a courier. The Lenhauser Bakery back in town wanted my special brand of chocolate. Said they were gonna use it for pudding and…”

The farmer paused. His eyes widened, and his jaw nearly fell off his face.

“Oh good gods,” he whispered.

Without saying another word, the farmer sprinted away from the goblins and immediately climbed onto the nearest horse he could find. Afterwards, he shouted and beckoned the horse to start running, and the mare began to sprint along the soil, her hooves clomping in the dirt. The goblins observed the farmer as he rode back out into town, leaving them to sit idly by in front of the table with their containers of melted chocolate. Krumvell was still chugging the chocolate from his bucket while the other three goblins were staring at their containers looking defeated.

“I’m assuming he had all the money on him,” Bunng concluded.

“Most likely,” Grovmar responded.

“…Maybe he hid the coins at the bottom of the bucket. Y’know, since he was expecting us to eat shit. Maybe he wanted us to eat our way to the reward?”

“Screw it; let’s go for it.”

Grovmar, Bunng, and Groshlar imitated Krumvell and promptly set their buckets up to their mouths. Soon enough, all four goblins were slurping up the melted chocolate, snorting and mumbling as the substance ran down their faces.

________________________________________

The goblins all found themselves lying down in a pile next to the contract board, fully exhausted from all the running around they did all day. Groshlar belched deeply and licked his lips, still tasting chocolate in his mouth. Krumvell and Bunng were rubbing their distended bellies. Grovmar was looking up at the board with scorn, frustrated that none of their contracts resulted in sufficient payment. He slowly turned and looked to the left, witnessing the glowing orange sun descending and disappearing behind the hills. Grovmar exhaled and rubbed his big nose before he grunted and stood back up. Groshlar could see what his brother was doing and rolled his eyes.

“Grov… _no_. We’re not doing any more contracts,” Groshlar said, sounding too tired to yell.

“We have to…you wanna sleep in the garbage again?”

“If we have to. Fuck it.”

Grovmar huffed. “What about you two? Huh? You wanna sleep in the funky trash again? Is that what all you cunts want, to just lie around on the ground, attract some flies, and eventually get shoved into a hole so no one has to deal with you anymore?”

Krumvell and Bunng didn’t answer. They looked away from Grovmar for a moment and stared at the pile of garbage that they slept in the other night. Someone, presumably a worker inside of an inn, walked up to the pile carrying a giant bag of rotten meat. He nonchalantly tossed the meat into the pile before walking away. Bunng and Krumvell grimaced when they noticed how some of the flies immediately swarmed around the bag. Even worse, both of them were disturbed when a naked, one-eyed goblin who couldn’t even find an eyepatch sprinted towards the bag and immediately tore it open so he could ravenously cram the rotten meat in his mouth. Krumvell and Bunng looked away self-consciously, while Groshlar just smirked and folded his arms.

“Just…one more. If this one turns out horribly too, fine. Blame me as much as you want for it, and we’ll gladly come back to that lovely heap of refuse over there.”

“I will,” Groshlar stubbornly said.

Sighing, Grovmar reached up and removed one more contract from the board. He skimmed the note before looking down at the fields that needed to be signed.

“‘Name: Ogrell Syn’Gorrsh. Race: Ogre. Job: Looking for my lost daughter. Location: South of Layric Town in a white cottage. Payment: 1000 gold coins.’”

Bunng sighed as he stood up and shrugged. “One more couldn’t hurt I guess.”

“But the sun’s already setting,” Krumvell added. “How far away is this cottage?”

“It just says south of Layric Town. Guess we just gotta follow the road and see what we find,” Grovmar declared.

Groshlar sniffed and licked his teeth. “I’m not doin’ this unless we confirm what we’re gonna do if this goes sideways. We are _not_ comin’ back here empty-handed.”

“No, we’re not,” Grovmar snarled. “This ogre says he’ll pay us a thousand gold coins. So we’re getting a thousand gold coins.”

“And if this turns out to be a hoax? Or if this ogre doesn’t have the money?”

Grovmar shrugged. “We already killed three people today. At this point? No one’s gonna care if we kill an ogre.”

Groshlar chuckled. “Now see, _that’s_ what I like to hear!”


	3. Don’t Talk to the Ogre

Groshlar knocked on the cottage door four times before stepping backwards. As he stood still and waited impatiently for the owner to answer the door, Bunng looked over his shoulder at the environment and frowned. The goblins took the main path south that led out of Layric Town, but they had traveled so far that they were literally over a mile away from civilization. Bunng wouldn’t be all that concerned about the situation, except for the fact that none of them had any weapons or lanterns with them. And it was slowly becoming so dark that the goblins could hardly see their own feet when they walked.

“Gods, I hope this ogre is here,” Bunng groaned.

“Guess we’ll have to break in if he ain’t,” Groshlar snorted.

The tallest of the four goblins knocked on the door again, on the verge of kicking at the wooden door if Ogrell didn’t answer in time. Before the situation managed to escalate, the hairy goblin heard booming footsteps from inside and relaxed himself. Someone grumbled from the other side of the door, shortly before the door swung open, revealing an oversized humanoid beast who was seven feet tall. None of the goblins’ heads even reached the beast’s neck; they all had to look up to see the ogre’s head. And even then, all of them noticed that the creature’s enormous pudge restricted their vision. Unlike orcs, who were brawny and muscular, the ogre was corpulent, and his arms and legs seemed composed more of fat than muscle. His orange skin was smooth, but covered in glistening sweat. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and merely clad in a pair of grayish-brown wool pants, with his gargantuan stomach sagging over the waistline. The ogre’s head looked almost the same as a human’s, but his nose was wide and fat, his ears looked like saucers that were slightly pointed at the ends of them, and his mouth looked uncanny because of how spread out some of his teeth were. The orange-skinned ogre reached down and scratched his left breast, dragging his yellow nails against the chunk of pudgy flesh.

“Yes? What goblins what?” he asked in a thick, deep voice.

“We’re answering that ad about your lost daughter,” Grovmar answered.

Ogrell paused for a moment and scratched his bald head. Then he nodded and grumbled, stepping aside. “Yes, yes. Come in. Need help.”

After Ogrell moved aside, the four goblins all walked inside the cottage and were immediately blown back by the scent. They were expecting the cottage to reek of sweat and musk, or even fecal matter. But all they could smell was meat that was frying in the cottage’s kitchen, with smoke filling up the house. As Ogrell closed the door, he exhaled and started to rush back to the kitchen.

“Wait minute,” he said, stomping his way past the goblins.

Groshlar stared at Ogrell from behind, gazing at his sweaty bare back and the chunky pair of buttocks stuffed into a pair of wool pants. The hairy goblin growled lustfully as he reached down and rubbed his groin. Grovmar smacked him in the back of his head.

“OW! The hell was that for?!”

“You’re not fucking him,” Grovmar said flatly.

Groshlar licked his lips. “You saw how big he was. How much you thinkin’ he’s got a juicy thick cock under all that pudge?”

“This ogre has a _daughter_. By default, he’s not a fag.”

“Hehe…I can change his mind.”

“Who gives a fuck if he’s a fag or not? He’s cooking food!” Bunng shouted.

The yellow goblin sprinted down the cottage’s wide corridor and turned left, entering the same brightly-lit room that Ogrell just rushed into. Krumvell followed him, walking into the kitchen and standing next to the chubby goblin as they stared at the spacious kitchen that had two wooden round tables positioned near one of the closed windows. Ogrell was standing in front of a large built-in wood stove that had a few logs burning beneath the installation. He also had some of the windows open to let out some of the smoke. Ogrell grumbled to himself as he stirred the contents within a frying pan and looked back at Bunng and Krumvell. He immediately grunted as he reached on a nearby counter with his left hand and tossed a massive chunk of raw meat into a container storing cooled meat inside of it before shutting said container. Bunng raised his eyebrow after looking at the grayish-pink meat.

“What was that?”

“Leftover. No need. Meal almost ready. Sit at table. Ogrell feed goblins.”

Krumvell and Bunng didn’t argue with the ogre. They rushed over to two of the chairs at the round table next to them and sat down with grins on their faces. Grovmar and Groshlar entered the kitchen and could see that Ogrell was nearly finished preparing his food. Both of them promptly rushed over to a set of empty chairs as well and sat down, waiting impatiently to get served. When Ogrell finished making dinner, he walked away from the stove carrying the frying pan and over to the table, which already had a set of plates resting on the wooden furniture. Ogrell dumped a portion of the pan’s contents onto each plate, dividing the dinner into five parts. He set the pan back onto the stove and extinguished the fire before he sat back down next to the goblins. All four of them began to messily consume their meal, picking up the brownish-white flesh and shoveling it down their mouths. Grovmar paused for a brief moment as he looked down at his dish, examining the chunks of meat that were mixed together with chopped green and red peppers. He couldn’t exactly make out what kind of meat it was, but then again, he didn’t care much either.

So the goblins all stuffed their mouths, swallowing their food in huge gulps, only pausing to belch or lick their greasy fingers. Ogrell was eating in the same manner; he grabbed a handful of meat and chopped peppers and crammed it all into his mouth, not caring in the slightest when some of the food fell on the floor. Sometimes he didn’t even chew his food; he merely tilted his head backwards and let the flesh and peppers slide down his gullet. When he was halfway finished and noticed the guests were almost done with their food, he stood up from the table and walked over to a giant barrel he had sitting near one of the windows. He opened up one of the cabinets and pulled out five large steins, moments before he dipped them all into the barrel, scooping out the contents. A loud clink distracted the goblins from their meal as Ogrell set the steins on the table; they stopped eating for a short moment so they could look at the steins that were all filled with frothy, golden beer. Krumvell and Grovmar grabbed the glasses so they could consume their beverage, but Groshlar and Bunng went back to eating until their plates were nearly empty.

By the time Bunng finally sampled the beer, his belly was full, and he felt a bit exhausted from eating so fast. He still downed a third of the glass in a few big gulps, before he set the glass down and burped again. The yellow goblin sniffled a few times and exhaled, and then his nostrils widened as a strange odor filled his lungs. Bunng scowled and curiously looked under the table, frowning as he looked at Ogrell’s legs. His pants looked very damp, and a puddle had formed on his chair and was silently dripping onto the floor. When Bunng looked back up at Ogrell, the ogre was nonchalantly finishing his dinner, acting as if nothing odd was happening. Bunng blinked but chose not to say anything, given how he and the others slept in garbage the other day, and came very close to devouring excrement for money. Everyone finished eating a few minutes later, and laid back in their chairs as they felt their distended stomachs gurgling and digesting the food. Grovmar belched so hard that spittle flew from his mouth, while Ogrell passed gas for several seconds straight and exhaled with relief, not even bothering to excuse himself.

“Damn! No wonder everyone whines about how much you ogres stink!” said Groshlar, with his nose plugged.

Ogrell blinked and stared at Groshlar. “Compliment, Ogrell assumes.”

“Coming from him, yeah. My brother would outright worship you if you shat your pants in public without caring,” Grovmar teased.

Groshlar picked a piece of pepper from between his teeth and flicked it over against Grovmar’s face. The shorter goblin grunted and wiped his face off, while Groshlar just smirked at him.

“Anyways,” Grovmar continued. “About that contract?”

Ogrell nodded and blinked. “Sanya. Ogrell daughter. Missing this many days,” he said, holding up seven pudgy fingers.

“It’s been a whole week?” Bunng asked.

Ogrell nodded again. “Worried. No letter. Found tracks, no lead to her. Ogrell can’t find alone. Ogrell need help.”

“What about your mate? Isn’t she looking too?”

Ogrell shook his head. “Deceased, mate is. Daughter only left. Daughter all Ogrell have. Need help.”

Bunng raised his eyebrow. “ _Deceased_?”

Krumvell rubbed his nose and cut in. “How do you know she ain’t dead already?”

“No body. Sanya alive; Ogrell knows. Sanya strong, like father.”

“Yes, well, I’m assuming Sanya also fat like father, given how much you ogres eat. Maybe she wasn’t abducted, but there _have_ been wyverns spotted in this area.”

“Not devoured. Not by wyverns. Wyvern attack ogres rare. Ogres riddled with pong. Like goblins. No beasts or monsters eat ogres. Too fetid. We make beasts sick.”

Krumvell blinked. “Huh. Suppose that’d explain why none of us has been attacked by a wild animal in years.”

“How come no one else has tried helping you yet? A thousand gold coins is a damn good reward, especially in Glordale,” Grovmar said.

“Because Ogrell ogre. Ogrell beast who never bathe. Ogrell beast who uses pestilence and noisome odors as defense. Ogrell no use chamber pot; Ogrell prefers pissing and shitting on floor, or in pants. Ogrell fat. Ogrell has atrocious grammar.”

“And let’s not forget you got really bad breath!” Krumvell pointed out.

Ogrell flicked his eyes and glared at Krumvell, and he slowly slid down in his seat to try and hide himself.

“Yes. That too. You all goblins. Races hate you. You understand Ogrell pain.”

“Well, none of us are as _fat_ as you,” Groshlar started, before chuckling. “That being said, you do have one advantage we don’t.”

“What is that?”

“You have money. Money that you promised to deliver us if we complete this task.”

Groshlar flashed a shark-like grin at Ogrell and rubbed his hands together. “Get what I’m saying?”

It didn’t take Ogrell long to put the pieces together. He grumbled as he dug into his pocket and pulled out a small pouch full of money. After pulling off the string keeping it tied together, Ogrell dumped the coins onto the table. Groshlar and the others leaned forward and counted the coins, only to frown afterwards.

“There’s only twelve coins here,” Grovmar commented.

“Yes. Thieves everywhere. Ogrell always in danger. Ogrell must hide riches. Other coins buried.”

“Buried where?” Groshlar asked, with some hostility in his voice.

“Goblins know after Sanya found. No money for goblins ‘til then.”

Groshlar squinted and folded his arms. “So. We playing that game, eh?”

“Yes. Ogrell knows games. This game Ogrell want play. Fair game.”

Grovmar exhaled before he turned and looked outside one of the kitchen windows, frowning when he saw how dark it was. “It’s too late to look for Sanya at this point. Perhaps it’d be better if we all rest for the night; we’ll have all day tomorrow to start looking for her.”

“Ogrell agrees. Attic. Goblins sleep there. Will wake goblins in morning.”

“Fine with me,” Krumvell said, as he, Grovmar, and Bunng all got out of their chairs and began to head up a set of stairs. 

Groshlar grabbed all the coins and stuffed them into his pockets, shortly before he got out of his chair and looked at the obese ogre. Ogrell noticed Groshlar grinning and walking up to him, causing him to blink.

“Problem?”

The tall, greenish-gray goblin licked his lips and pressed a hand against Ogrell’s orange pudge. “Y’know, I’ve no problem with fat beasts like you. Heh, just means you got more meat on your bones. Curious…is there any way for me to _suck_ the location of your hidden coins outta you?”

Ogrell blinked as Groshlar kept rubbing his belly and started moving his hand between his legs. The ogre immediately grabbed Groshlar’s arm and shoved it away.

“No.”

“Oh. Hmm. Pity. Well…perhaps you wouldn’t mind if a long and meaty ‘sausage’ found its way into your mouth mysteriously?”

Ogrell suddenly changed his attitude and smiled at Groshlar. “No. Ogrell won’t mind. After all…Ogrell _loves_ to eat.”

Groshlar kept smirking at Ogrell, up until the ogre flashed his own malicious grin at him. Groshlar frowned and backed away as he looked at all of Ogrell’s rotting teeth. It wasn’t that Ogrell was grinning, but actual saliva started to run down his lip and dripped down onto the table. Groshlar looked at the saliva falling onto the table, before looking back up at the ogre’s wicked face.

And then he turned around and swiftly ran upstairs.

_________________________________

They had no covers, but Ogrell provided the goblins with their own pillows. All of them had undressed, having stripped down to only their underwear (or in Krumvell’s case, nothing at all). The attic wasn’t filled with many items or other miscellaneous knick-knacks. All the goblins could see were various boxes full of junk or random belongings for Ogrell and his family. Bunng and Grovmar were curiously picking through some of the boxes near one end of the attic, while Groshlar was standing up with his arms folded, looking around to see where Ogrell might’ve been keeping his stash. He looked down at the partially-lit lantern on the floor before turning and looking at Krumvell. The bearded goblin was already asleep and snoring gently. A smirk came across Groshlar’s face as he looked down at his stained underwear and moved near Krumvell. Then he sat down near his head and shoved his feet forward, setting them both mere inches away from Krumvell’s big nose. Krumvell snorted a few times, and Groshlar chuckled once he slowly brushed his soles against Krumvell’s nostrils. Krumvell eventually snorted and opened his eyes, gazing up and staring at Groshlar.

“Mmf tired, Grosh. You can tease me with your stinky feet tomorrow,” he mumbled.

“Yes, well,” Grosh said, reaching down and scratching his crotch, “it _is_ smoky in this house from all that cooking. Real humid too. Would be a shame to let an opportunity like this go to waste…”

Krumvell sniffed Groshlar’s sweaty feet again, slowly flipping over so he was lying on his stomach instead. Groshlar grinned as he leaned back against the wall, using his hands as a pillow so he could show off his hairy armpits. When Krumvell lifted his head and looked at the tall goblin, he could see just how sweaty the beast was. His face almost seemed to glisten, and Krumvell noticed various drops of sweat that were running down his hairy chest and abs. Maybe it was just pheromones, but Krumvell couldn’t stop flaring his nostrils and breathing in Groshlar’s musk and the stink of his unwashed body.

“Not tired now, are ya?” Groshlar growled lustfully.

Krumvell breathed heavily a few times, feeling his shaft lengthening between his legs. He crawled over towards Groshlar, burying his nose against his chest and sniffing noisily. Groshlar remained still, watching as Krumvell inhaled his musk and sweat, even going as far as pressing his big nose against his pungent armpits. Eventually, neither of them could overlook how aroused they were, and Groshlar slyly moved his right hand down and lowered his underwear until his penis flopped out. Krumvell stared at the goblin’s phallic organ, watching as it oozed small amounts of pre-ejaculate. And then he lowered his head and started to suck on it, much to Groshlar’s delight. As Krumvell was busy performing fellatio, Grovmar couldn’t help but glare at the two from afar, scowling and feeling as if he was missing something. He looked away from the two goblins and returned to looking through the boxes with Bunng. Bunng heard Groshlar moaning and panting from the other side of the room and chuckled.

“Krum and Grosh fucking again?”

“Are you surprised?” Grovmar asked.

Bunng smirked as he looked around the boxes and spied on them, watching as Groshlar panted and curled his toes while Krumvell kept moving his head up and down.

“Doesn’t take much to get ‘em goin’, does it?”

“Course not. You can throw a pair of sweaty socks in Groshlar’s face and he’ll probably come in ‘em.”

Bunng turned around and looked at Grovmar. “Why you sayin’ it like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re jealous,” Bunng said, in a slight mocking tone.

“I’m not jealous.”

“It sounds like it.”

Grovmar tossed a book on the floor in frustration. “I’m not jealous.”

“Ah. You’re just frustrated,” Bunng said, before sticking out his tongue.

“Shut the fuck up! I’m…” Grovmar took a few deep breaths before exhaling and wiping sweat from his brow. “I’m just…we need money, Bunng. We need more fuckin’ money, and all those two care about are sucking each other’s cocks and getting intoxicated from musk.”

Bunng exhaled as he walked over to Grovmar and nodded. “Yes, Grov. We do need money. Desperately. We need a place to live. We need to find this ogre’s daughter. We need to stop the War of the Dwarven Trio. We need to end world hunger. We need to kill all the cultists, witches, and wizards who long to resurrect demons. These are all things we ‘need’ to do, Grov.”

Grovmar shook his head and exhaled. “I just don’t understand why my brother keeps acting the way he does.”

“Because cheesecake.”

Grovmar looked over at Bunng and raised an eyebrow. “Pardon?”

Bunng chuckled and nodded. “When I was a lot younger, my mother took me to some wedding for her friend. Or my aunt. Or someone—I dunno. Anyways, as soon as we got there, the first thing I noticed was this giant cheesecake just sitting on the table, freshly-baked, all fat and creamy and covered in this elderberry sauce. Naturally, I stuck my finger into it to taste it, and my mother slapped my hand away. She said I couldn’t eat it…that I was gaining weight faster than the other goblins, that I’d end up turning into a fat slob, like my father before me. She told me that I needed to maintain my physical appearance, especially if I wanted to find a cute mate.”

“I’m assuming she didn’t know you were a fag at the time.”

“No, but that’s not the point. Y’see…my mother told me what I ‘needed.’ But I _wanted_ that cake, right then and there.”

Grovmar chuckled. “I’m guessing you ate it.”

“The whole damn thing,” Bunng said, smirking. “Grabbed it, snuck under a table with a cloth on it, and ate every last crumb. They caught me licking the plate clean.”

“Hmph. I gotcha.”

Bunng exhaled. “I knew my mother was gonna beat me for disobeying her—which she did. I knew the other party guests would be furious at me—which they were.” Bunng shrugged. “Didn’t care. I saw something I wanted, and I took it. And for fifteen full minutes, I was…surrounded in ecstasy. Sweet, sugar-infested, ecstasy. I wasn’t worried about how fat I’d get. Didn’t care about if I met a mate or not. Didn’t care if I was ugly. I just wanted that damn cake. And I got it. Never regretted doing it ever since.”

“…Huh. Well. Suppose that makes a bit of sense.”

There was a brief pause, and then Bunng grunted as he bent down and lowered his underwear, showing off his flaccid penis and testicles. Grovmar looked at the yellow goblin’s groin and stammered.

“I—what are you doing?!”

“Hmm? Oh, nothing. It’s just…well. I don’t _need_ to sleep without any clothes on. Ogrell didn’t _need_ to piss his pants while he was eating dinner earlier. Groshlar doesn’t _need_ to have his cock sucked on. And Krumvell doesn’t _need_ to suck on it. But hey.”

Bunng shrugged, shortly before he walked over to where Grovmar was sitting, making sure his crotch was inches away from Grovmar’s nose. Grovmar froze for a moment, flicking his eyes between the goblin’s testicles and his bloated gut almost touching his face. Bunng casually scratched his stomach before he turned around and stretched as he yawned. Then he smacked his lips and grunted as he bent over, his buttocks brushing against Grovmar’s nose. Grovmar breathed in the pheromones and musk emanating from Bunng’s posterior before he felt his shaft rising within his underwear. After Bunng bent over, he exhaled and lied flat on his stomach, his butt still exposed to Grovmar. Grovmar curled his toes and kept looking at Bunng’s body, feeling sweat building up around his armpits and running down his sides. Grovmar already knew what Bunng was doing, yet his hands reached down and pulled off his underwear. The grayish-green goblin found himself crawling forward and leaning down, sniffing Bunng’s rump again as his penis grew more erect. He opened his mouth and shuddered, hot breath blowing against the buttocks, before Grovmar lowered his head and performed anilingus. Bunng growled tenderly and felt his own shaft growing between his legs; he waited for Grovmar to finish before he got on his hands and knees and positioned himself.

Grovmar lost track of it all. All the frustrations, all his bitterness towards his brother, the thought of ending up like the one-eyed goblin eating rotten food from the garbage. It all went away, and now all he cared about was thrusting his length into Bunng’s rectum. Both of them stayed quiet so they wouldn’t disturb Krumvell or Groshlar; Bunng resorted to faint gasps and shudders while Grovmar only panted or growled as softly as he could. Neither of them knew how much time transpired. Neither of them cared that they were having sex inside someone else’s home while he slept just a floor beneath them. All Grovmar was concerned for was Bunng, and relieving himself of all this frustration. After sodomizing Bunng for about five minutes and firmly grasping his meaty sides, Grovmar shuddered when he thrust forward and ejaculated, his entire face drenched in sweat. Bunng emitted a high-pitched whimpering noise and gripped the pillow in front of him, while also feeling his penis throbbing as he ejaculated onto the floor. The duo waited until they stopped releasing the milky fluids; afterwards, a panting Grovmar removed his semi-flaccid length from Bunng, while Bunng slowly collapsed back onto his stomach.

Now physically exhausted, Bunng lied down on the pillow and gradually closed his eyes, whereas Grovmar slid his way next to him and rested on the floor across from him. Bunng smiled with his eyes still shut and snickered.

“Feel better?”

Grovmar exhaled a few more times before meekly smiling. “Maybe a li’l bit…”

“Thought so.”


	4. Don’t Stop at the Meadows

The group of four goblins and ogre set out on their journey as soon as the sun was up. Ogrell packed a series of rucksacks for everyone to carry and took a cudgel with him for protection. While the ogre carried the largest rucksack that had tent equipment inside of it and a few lanterns, the goblins were all responsible for hauling around various sacks full of food. Once everyone was properly equipped, they all headed south of the cottage, straying further and further away from Layric Town until they couldn’t even see the outline of the town from a distance any longer. Ogrell led the group at first, walking in front of all the goblins while they trailed behind him. But after having to put up with Ogrell’s flatulence for a full hour straight, the goblins all decided it would be better to walk alongside him, instead of directly behind his fetid rump. Groshlar stayed quiet most of the time, scowling every now and then as he felt the blazing hot sun beating down on the whole group, causing everyone to sweat until their clothes became damp. Krumvell was busy examining the scenery, gazing around at all of the blooming trees that were growing pears and apples, some of which were already ripe and ready to be picked.

He stroked his red beard a few times before he dug his hand into his left pocket and pulled out a few pecans, cramming them all into his mouth and chewing noisily. He swallowed hard after consuming the pecans and looked over at Ogrell, watching as the obese orange ogre rubbed his big nose and adjusted his unbuttoned wool shirt that showed off his gargantuan belly. Bunng was constantly sniffing the air and looking at the ground, where he noticed a few strange, oversized footprints in the grass. He looked behind his shoulder and saw nothing but wide open plains, a few fields of trees, and the dirt path that he and the other four creatures were traveling on. Up ahead was the same situation: nothing but a series of plains and meadows, with a few green hills obscuring part of his vision. Bunng groaned as he wiped his nose and looked over at Ogrell.

“Ogrell, where’d you last see your daughter?”

“Hmm? Oh, um, Ogrell saw Sanya at home. Sanya left. Go fetch water. Never came home.”

Bunng nodded before he heard a faint thump in the distance and turned to his left. Two red-scaled wyverns had landed on the ground, each one well over four meters tall. Bunng had to stop moving, frozen by the sight of each wyvern. One of them was snorting smoke out of its nostrils, while the other one was sniffing the air extensively and wandering around the fields.

“Err, we should maybe—”

Too late. One of the red wyverns spotted the group and snorted. It slowly started to walk towards the path, stomping so hard that it left deep footprints in the soil and caused faint tremors. Everyone in the group knew they were exposed, but there was no point in running, especially with the heavy rucksacks they were wearing. Ogrell snarled as he lifted his metal spiked cudgel, ready to fight if necessary. Krumvell looked at everyone else and rolled his eyes, scoffing.

“Relax everyone; it probably just wants some of our food.”

“It’s looking at the food, dumbass,” Groshlar snarled.

The red wyvern snorted twice, blowing out some more smoke from its nostrils. Everyone watched as the beast spread its wings apart, showing off just how large it was, before it lowered its head so it was looking directly at the group. The gang could see the beast’s glowing yellow eyes almost twinkling. They noticed just how rigged and rough the red scales were; someone could slash their sword against the beast’s hide, and it probably wouldn’t even damage the scales.

“Talk,” the wyvern suddenly said, in a deep, feminine voice.

Grovmar raised an eyebrow. “Wait a second—you can talk?”

The wyvern chuckled. “What? D’you think _all_ of us beasts are mindless monsters? Them dragons can talk. Why not us?”

“But what…” Grovmar exhaled. “Never mind. Look, we’re just walking down the road. No need for things to escalate.”

The wyvern didn’t respond. Instead, she moved closer to Ogrell, opened her mouth, and licked his face. Ogrell grunted and grimaced as the wet, hot tongue grazed his nose and cheek, and then the wyvern backed away.

“Perhaps. Unless you _want_ them to.”

“We’re just—we’re looking for this ogre’s daughter, that’s all. We’ve no intention of harming you,” Bunng said.

The wyvern snorted. “Your presence harms me. I see _five_ of you, but only _one_ potential meal.”

Everyone continued to stay still as the wyvern observed them. She stepped to the right and leaned down in front of Groshlar, who was scowling at her and looking like he wanted to gouge out one of her eyes. The wyvern grinned widely and blinked.

“Mm…you’re a lot taller than the other goblins.”

She leaned forward and sniffed him, and immediately recoiled. 

“BLECH! Your stench is appalling!”

“Yeah, well, your breath ain’t so fresh either, so fuck you too,” Groshlar snidely retorted.

The wyvern huffed before glancing over at Bunng and blinked. “Suppose I _could_ eat you…but all you goblins are known for your wretched hygiene.”

“Ogrell not bathe in months. Ogrell is ogre; no hygiene. Smell bad. Why eat Ogrell?”

“You _are_ the fattest one here…”

Krumvell exhaled. “Hate to interrupt your ‘decision making,’ but, speaking from experience? Do not eat Ogrell. I once ate a rib someone dropped in a pile of pig shit. Now, sure, I wiped it off, but that didn’t drive away all the germs. And it didn’t prevent me from vomiting my guts up for a week. Now…no offense, Ogrell, but this ogre spent the last hour or so farting nonstop.”

Krumvell leaned over and sniffed Ogrell’s behind before recoiling and plugging his nose. “And judging by the stench, I think he _might_ have, uh, ‘dropped’ something in his trousers. You really wanna eat that?”

Even the wyvern understood what Krumvell was talking about. He backed away from the five beasts and snorted in frustration.

“Typical. Can’t ever eat you ogres without the risk of getting sick.”

“Listen, erm…”

“Sylesse.”

“Sylesse. You’re just hungry; I get that! But maaaaaaaaybeeeeeee you should, I dunno, eat something bigger! Maybe something more fresh-smelling. Like some sheep or a giant cow!”

Sylesse snorted with frustration before she turned around and swiped her tail at the ground, blowing a cloud of dirt into everyone’s faces.

“You are no fun,” she snarled.

Sylesse spread her wings wide and took to the skies. The other wyvern, which was busy resting and glaring at the five creatures, saw Sylesse ascend and went after her. The group looked up and watched as the two winged reptiles flew away, and promptly exhaled with relief upon realizing that they were safe. 

“That was close,” Bunng said, rubbing his eyes.

Groshlar curiously walked behind Ogrell and sniffed his pants too. And just like Krumvell, he backed away and plugged his nose.

“Ugh…did you _actually_ shit your pants?”

Ogrell looked back at Groshlar and nodded. “Yes. Earlier. When Ogrell passed lots of gas. You saw what happened just now. Disgusting ogre greater than devoured ogre.”

Bunng exhaled. “I’m assuming all you ogres do this.”

“Not all. But many.”

“Okay good, that narrows down what happened to your daughter! So let’s say she went down to the lake. That’s fine and dandy. Let’s assume that she…either did not bathe recently, or she soiled her britches. If that’s the case, a monster didn’t eat her. It couldn’t have; it would’ve been repulsed by the smell.”

“Unless there was some kind of demonic creature lurking about. You know them ghouls don’t give a shit how nasty their prey is,” Grovmar pointed out. 

“We’re in Glordale! Since when the hell are ghouls seen roaming about in Glordale?!”

“Forget about all that,” Krumvell interrupted. “Let’s scratch off eaten by hostile monster. Do you have any enemies? Anyone come to your cottage harassing your daughter? Anyone caught trying to break in or something?”

Ogrell shook his head. “No.”

Krumvell huffed and shrugged. “Well. I say we keep walking then. Maybe we’ll run into another person or creature who knows what happened.”

___________________________________

The group traveled for another hour or so, wandering down the same dirt path and inspecting the scenery around them for any kind of clues. But except for a series of more oversized wyvern footprints, none of them were any closer to finding Sanya. It wasn’t until they reached a vast orchard meadow located between the main road and an alternate path leading into the forest that Ogrell noticed something amiss. He walked into the meadow and sniffed, feeling the soft grass against his bare feet and recognizing a familiar stench in the air.

“Ogrell, did you shit yourself _again_?” Groshlar asked.

Ogrell smirked. “No. Ogres nearby. Whole group. Tribe maybe.”

Without waiting for the others’ opinions, Ogrell rushed into the orchard, disappearing amongst the blooming trees that were growing red and yellow apples. Grovmar beckoned for the rest of the goblins to follow Ogrell, which they did. All of them jogged through the grassy, tree-infested orchard, until the trademark ogre stench intensified, almost making the goblins gag in the process. Suddenly, the goblins all spotted an oversized corpulent beast standing in front of a tree and holding an axe. All of them recognized the creature’s flabby exterior and round, pointy, oversized ears anywhere. They ran past the pale-skinned ogre and kept moving forward, up until they ran down a hill and found Ogrell. The orange-skinned ogre was smiling as he looked around, surprised at the scene around him. There were well over a dozen ogres all wandering around eating, cooking food, chopping down trees, or reorganizing their supplies.

“Ohhhh, so _that’s_ where the smell is coming from,” Krumvell concluded.

“No shit, Krum,” growled Groshlar.

Ogrell and the goblins gazed at all of the ogres, studying their clothing and movements. Many of them were only clad in black or brown loincloths, not caring that their enormous buttocks were showing. Some of them wore clothing similar to Ogrell, just a pair of pants and an open shirt revealing their stomach, while others didn’t wear a shirt at all. Some of the goblins were surprised that the females wore just as little clothing as the men, and wandered around with their breasts hanging out for everyone to see. Ogrell gestured for the goblins to approach them, and they did. The first ogre to notice them was an obese male with skin as white as marble. He turned and dropped the heavy log he was carrying, grinning once he saw a familiar face.

“Fellow brethren! So wonderful to see you here!”

Ogrell laughed and nodded, setting down his rucksack and cudgel as he approached the white ogre. Once they were close enough, both of them slammed their stomachs forward, bumping their plump bellies together with a hefty thwacking sound.

“Ogrell thought he smell ogre! Ogrell not know nomads here!”

“Hah, lucky you then! Guess our stink is great enough to attract _any_ ogre in this country!”

The white ogre chuckled again before he looked over Ogrell’s shoulder and spotted the four goblins. Krumvell waved his hand at him and smiled, while the other three sheepishly waited to be introduced.

“Who them? Snacks for our people?”

“Ogrell wishes. They friends. Goblins full of cordiality.”

The white ogre blinked. “Cord—what?”

“Friendly. Friendly goblins!”

The white ogre scratched his head, feeling a bit confused. “Oh, okay then.”

The group of goblins approached the white ogre after he started walking towards them and introduced themselves.

“Uh, hello, giant ogre. …I’m assuming you’ve no intention of killing us,” Grovmar said.

“No, mate, never! Friend of ogres is friend of mine!”

“I wouldn’t exactly say we’re ‘friends’ with Ogrell—”

Grovmar elbowed Groshlar in his stomach to shut him up, while the white ogre just blinked and rubbed his nose.

“So what brings you travelers here?”

“We’re looking for that ogre’s daughter,” Bunng answered. “Apparently she’s been missing for a week now.”

“Mm…strange. One of my sons went missing too, back in the spring.”

“Did you look for him?”

The ogre nodded. “Two months straight. Never found the body…found an arm though.”

Bunng looked down and exhaled. “Sorry…”

“Eh. You didn’t kidnap him. ‘Sides, not like anyone can do anything about it now.”

Ogrell slowly crept towards the white ogre and blinked, while the pale-skinned beast flared his nostrils again and looked at Ogrell.

“You said your name’s Ogrell, right?”

Ogrell nodded. “Ogrell Syn’Gorrsh.”

The white ogre stared at Ogrell for a moment as he rolled his tongue around his mouth. “Huh. We haven’t met right?”

“Ogrell no know your name.”

“Odlar Okkfint.”

Ogrell shook his head. “No know Odlar.”

Odlar scratched his bald head and shrugged. “Ah well. Guess my memory’s getting a little hazy!”

Odlar’s belly shook as he laughed heartily, while the four goblins grumbled and started to feel a bit self-conscious.

“Sooooo then,” Grovmar interjected. “You two have fun…doing ogre things. We’re gonna rest and mingle with your tribe, if that’s okay.”

“S’no trouble at all!”

All the goblins nodded, and split up into two different groups. Grovmar and Bunng stayed with one another and wandered over to a group of ogres who were chopping down trees, while Groshlar and Krumvell walked in the opposite direction, disappearing between some of the apple trees. Groshlar exhaled as he looked around the meadows trying to find something of interest, while Krumvell heard his stomach growling and looked up into the trees.

“Lookit all of this…there’s enough apples here to keep us fed for weeks!”

Groshlar rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, sure, whatever. But them apples ain’t meat; we can’t survive off this shit forever.”

“Why not? Main thing we need is food, yeah? So why don’t we just stay here for a while, maybe build a cottage of our own to live in?”

“We can’t build a cottage without wood or stone, and we need nails and hammers and all that other shit people use for building. And the last time I checked, all those supplies cost _money_. Which we don’t have.”

Krumvell’s ears lowered and he frowned. “Oh yeah…forgot that.”

“Tch. I’m tellin’ ya, this whole ordeal better pan out, or I’m cutting that fucker’s throat in his sleep.”

“Just the other night you thought about fucking him. I saw you staring at his ass.”

Groshlar scratched his head. “Well, turns out he ain’t no fag, and he don’t intend on becoming one. ‘Sides…maybe I can rectify that with someone else today.”

Groshlar turned slowly to his left and grinned as he spotted a chubby orc walking through the meadow, his skin pale green and smothered in sweat.

“Mmmmm, now _there_ we go! Lookit how thick he is. Oh, I betcha that ogre used to be a blacksmith or stonemason!”

Groshlar grabbed Krumvell’s arm and tugged on it. “You wanna join us? Been a while since we both fucked an ogre.”

“I just sucked your cock last night. I’ll pass, thanks.”

Groshlar shrugged. “Suit yourself!”

Krumvell stood by the trees and watched as Groshlar sprinted over to the green-skinned ogre. He shook his head and grumbled, figuring he was better off caring about his own personal tastes. So Krumvell wandered away from most of the oversized ogres and found a quiet area that had one of the tallest apple trees in the meadow. Stomach grumbling again, the goblin ran forward and started climbing up the tree, grunting as he scurried up the bark and hopped from branch to branch like a squirrel. It only took him a few seconds before he reached one of the branches that had a few red apples on it and plucked them off. Then he grabbed another branch and shook it several times, listening to the leaves rustling and watching as some of the apples fell right off. One of them emitted a hollow _thump_ , which was followed by someone groaning in pain.

“The fuck…HEY!”

Krumvell looked down and spotted a short, portly white ogre clad in only a loincloth scowling and looking up at him. He chuckled meekly before he scurried back down the tree and landed in the soft grass.

“Sorry ‘bout that. Didn’t know anyone else was down here!”

The white-skinned ogre sat down on a log and rubbed his head. “Heard you goblins ain’t known for bein’ all that bright.”

Krumvell sniffed as he walked over to the log and sat down beside the ogre, still holding a few apples in his hands. “Bah, we goblins are known for many things! Being thieves, diggin’ through trash, not bathing for months, caring only about money—all that usual shit!”

The ogre scrunched up his face and turned away from Krumvell. “I’m guessing having foul breath is another trait of your race.”

Krumvell laughed heartily before biting into one of the apples. “Exactly! And you ogres are well-known for being incredibly fat, and ugly! And for farting a lot! And for smelling like shit. And for soiling your own trousers. And—”

“I get it,” the ogre snarled.

Krumvell bit into his apple a few more times and spoke with his mouth full. “Ain’t meanin’ to insult you. Just tell it like it is. It’s 1527; who gives a shit about hygiene anyway?”

“Humans. Obviously.”

“Well, I ain’t human. Feel free to be as disgusting as you want around me!”

The ogre looked down at the goblin and smirked at him. “So if I were to defecate into my hand and smush it all over your face…”

Krumvell swallowed hard and grimaced. “Uhhhhhhhhh, maybe we could have some boundaries.”

The ogre chuckled. “Thought so.”

As the ogre sat in silence for a moment and picked up one of the apples off the ground, Krumvell finished his first one. He tossed the apple core behind his back before opening his mouth wide and biting into the second one, slobbering and mumbling as he sucked in the sweet juices from the crunchy fruit. The ogre looked down at Krumvell and chuckled again.

“Hey, slow down, goblin. It’s not a race.”

Krumvell swallowed again and burped. “Course not. Just wanna make sure none of it goes to waste.”

“It’s gonna if you eat that fast. You’re gonna vomit it all back up!”

Krumvell shook his head. “Takes a lot to make me sick. ‘Sides, we’re all animals, yeah? I’m just doing what we’re supposed to do.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m keeping it simple. I see some food; I eat it. I see some water; I drink it. I’m cold; I look for shelter or build a fire. I’m in danger from a predator; I run away, hide, or try to kill it. That’s life.”

The ogre smirked and shook his head. “No, that is _not_ life. I tried telling that to an orc once. He just scoffed and told me, ‘Ornmagg, yer a fuckin’ naive twat. S’not how life works!’”

Krumvell rolled his eyes. “Of course an _orc_ told you that. I’m sure he was only fixated on the next battle to get into, or the next soldier to kill, or the next female to forcibly impregnate.” Krumvell paused for a moment so he could bite into his apple again. “Y’know, for all the talk I hear about you ogres, I still respect your race a whole lot more than them fuckin’ orcs. You all may be disgusting, but at least you’re not blood-craving, violence-driven sadists.”

“To be fair, not all orcs are like that. Last time I checked, the kingdom of Kosslivo has _vastly_ improved compared to how it was over a decade ago. I hear other races can actually walk into that town without worrying about being raped or murdered.”

“Hmph. Yeah, but look at what those orcs did to reach the point where they’re at now. They all fought each other for years, and it culminated with a bunch of orcs rebelling against their king—albeit, a cunt of a tyrant, from what I heard—and slaughtering each other until their king was killed and replaced. It took the deaths of thousands upon _thousands_ of orcs and for an entire nation to turn against _itself_ before the people said, ‘oh shit, maybe pointless bloodshed _isn’t_ the right way to do things.’ So…so what, just because Kosslivo is better _now_ , it means we should just ignore what happened all those years ago? We should congratulate the orcs and praise them all of a sudden?”

“No, but…” Ornmagg groaned and rubbed his head. “The world’s…complicated, goblin.”

Sighing deeply, Krumvell tossed his second apple core behind him and blinked. His ears lowered a bit as he looked down at his toes.

“That’s the problem,” he said softly. “Nothing is simple anymore. People go to war just-just because they have different ideals. Those dwarves are in one right now, and other races are gonna get involved soon. People kill themselves because they’re sad over…what? Not having enough coins? Because their home was destroyed? Friendships are broken over petty reasons. People are _murdered_ for petty reasons. Hell, me and my friends? We’re helping some ogre find his lost daughter, but we already figured out that she wasn’t taken by some monster. So chances are, she’s either dead, she’s been kidnapped and is being held for ransom, or she’s getting raped repeatedly. And as far as I know, this ogre’s daughter did nothing wrong.”

“…You ever notice that as we ‘evolve,’ we take a step back?”

Krumvell chuckled and licked his teeth. “We’ve improved our vocabulary…which makes it easier for people to insult one another, or to even turn people against each other. We’ve made better weapons…so we can kill each other a lot more easily with them. We’ve learned how to use magic…so now people can abuse said powers against innocents for their own malevolent reasons. It’s…it’s almost comical really!”

Ornmagg snorted. “It _is_ comical.”

Exhaling, Krumvell rubbed his eyes before speaking again. “I just want…everyone to be simple. You find food to eat. Find water to drink. You fuck when you’re aroused. You build shelter to survive. You shit when your bowels are full. Then you do it all over again ‘til you die. The end.”

“We both know that won’t happen.”

“Oh, I know…I know. But, y’know, wishful thinking.”

After sighing again, Krumvell picked an apple up off the ground, stood up, and tossed the apple up and down a few times.

“We could try to change the world, instead of complaining about it,” suggested Ornmagg.

“That sounds complicated.”

Krumvell stared at Ornmagg for a moment. And then he bit into the apple and started walking away.

“Nice talking to you, Ornmagg.”

“Likewise.”

As Krumvell began to walk away from the ogre, he heard grunting and panting a few yards to his right. Curious, Krumvell investigated the noise and walked between a few more trees within the meadows. He snorted and chuckled when he spotted Groshlar pinned against a tree with his pants down, and the same green-skinned ogre he saw from earlier was roughly sodomizing him. Krumvell couldn’t help but feel somewhat entertained, if not a bit aroused, from the display. So he just sat down on a nearby log and watched the two while nonchalantly biting into his apple.

_________________________________

The goblins and Ogrell had a rather eventless night. None of them talked much, and they had another meaty meal—albeit salty, since the meat Ogrell brought along had been profusely salted to prevent bacterial growth. Nevertheless, none of the goblins complained, and were just glad to have a proper meal again. Ogrell built a tent for the goblins, setting up the large net and ensuring that the tarp was placed over it correctly in case it rained later on. When Ogrell finished setting up the tent, he slowly moved away from the sheets of fabric acting as the goblins’ shelter and began to walk away. Grovmar noticed him leaving the tent and stuck his head outside of the tent’s flaps.

“Hey…ain’t ya sleeping with us?”

Ogrell shook his head. “Need stay awake. Patrol. Hostiles nearby. Beasts. Thieves. Killers. You sleep. Ogrell protect you.”

Grovmar watched as Ogrell slapped his cudgel in the palm of his right hand multiple times, and then nodded. “All right. Just don’t stay up too late!”

Grovmar went back into the tent and yawned before he reached down and scratched at his groin. Everyone else was already sleeping and clad only in their underwear; Krumvell was naked once again. The grayish-green goblin lied down next to Bunng and exhaled, letting his weariness overcome him. None of the goblins knew what happened once they were unconscious. None of them were aware of the strange, oversized beast that surreptitiously snuck its way into the tent. None of them were aware that the beast was drooling and licking its lips. As Grovmar dreamt, he felt something watery falling on his face and twitched a few times. As Groshlar dreamt, a massive grin spread across his face as he felt something warm and wet running against his groin. Even with his eyes closed, he could feel a bulge forming in his underwear. As Krumvell dreamt, he thought he heard a rumbling noise, something equivalent to a throaty belch. And as Bunng slept, he grimaced when he smelled someone’s putrid breath blasting against his face, and shivered when another long, wet, warm object ran itself against his cheek several times. And at some point, he could feel the same wet object against his belly. Bunng mumbled and finally opened his eyes just far enough to see part of the dirt he was laying on.

Bunng grunted as he sat up, still half-asleep. When he looked down at his stomach, he saw Grovmar lying there with his mouth wide open, snorting and drooling. Bunng suddenly calmed down; the foul breath and drool probably came from Grovmar’s mouth. It had to have. He turned and looked at Krumvell and Groshlar. Krumvell was still breathing gently, and Groshlar was snoring noisily, albeit Bunng noticed his underwear was damp, most likely from a nocturnal emission. 

Nothing was amiss, from what he saw. So Bunng grunted as he lied back down and shut his eyes.


	5. Don’t Talk to Strangers

The four goblins were still asleep when Ogrell walked into their tent. The panting ogre looked down at the short creatures, still soaked in their sweat and drooling as they snorted and snored with their eyes closed. Ogrell grumbled, scratching his oversized belly and blinking a few times. As Bunng snored with his belly rising and falling, he mumbled once he heard a familiar noise in his big ears. The yellow goblin slowly opened his eyes and blinked a few times, letting his vision come into focus. He wiggled his nose as the air inside the tent became warm and pungent, like someone just broke open several rotten eggs. Bunng turned his head to the left and saw Ogrell squatting down slightly with his large rump sticking out. It wasn’t until Bunng heard a long, horn-like sputtering noise that Bunng figured out what Ogrell was doing. He groaned loudly and sat up, moving Grovmar’s head from his stomach as he plugged his nose.

“Agh…all right; I’m up, I’m gettin’ up mate,” Bunng growled.

Ogrell looked over his shoulder and chuckled. “No rooster. Ogrell improvise.”

“Oh sure, yeah, flatulence is a _wonderful_ alternative,” Bunng said snidely.

As Bunng began to stand, he grimaced and wiped his face, feeling dried-saliva all over his cheek and chin. Krumvell and Groshlar were groaning and snorting as they began to wake up as well, their subconscious broken by Ogrell’s cacophonous flatus. As they started to yawn and stretch, Bunng looked down at the drooling Grovmar and kicked him in the face, causing the grayish-green goblin to snort and jolt awake.

“Gah, the fuck?!” Grovmar looked at Bunng and blinked. “Whuh?”

“It’s morning; get up.” Bunng licked his hand and wiped the dried saliva off with his own. “And you gotta stop sleeping on my gut at night. I could smell your breath in my sleep, and you drooled all over my face!”

Grovmar glowered at Bunng, blinking once and rubbing crud from his eyelashes. “S’it look like I give a damn?”

Ogrell observed the four goblins and snorted. “Good. Goblins woke. Leave soon, we must.”

As the ogre left the tent, Groshlar sat up and cracked his back. He looked down at the dried-up stain all over his underwear and grinned when he glared at Krumvell.

“Oi, Krum, thanks for that last night!”

Krumvell looked at Groshlar. “Mm?”

“Hehe, couldn’t resist, eh? Just had to get another mouthful of my cock?”

“I didn’t suck you off last night.”

“Yeeeeaaaaah, sure. I could feel you lapping at my crotch like some dog lickin’ up water! You always know what makes me tick!”

Krumvell exhaled. “I’m serious. I didn’t suck your cock. If I did, I would’ve made sure you didn’t waste all your seed in your underwear.”

Grovmar turned and chuckled when he looked at the big stain on his brother’s underwear. “S’matter, bro? Still having those little ‘accidents’ in your sleep like you did twenty years ago?”

Groshlar snarled as he got up and started to look for his clothes on the ground. “Fuck off. Someone was licking my cock last night; I’m sure of it.”

After the four goblins got dressed, they exited the tent and found the rucksacks still on the ground. All of them checked the contents within them, making sure that no one or nothing came by the other night and took some of their food and supplies while they were asleep. As Grovmar looked at a bag full of apples, he noticed Bunng holding a container full of yellowish fluids.

“Is that that wyvern bait you took from the scientist?”

Bunng nodded.

“Why you still got that?”

“Well…I dunno really. Bait is bait, and you heard that scientist; it’ll be useful during a battle. If this all goes south, maybe we’ll get lucky and run into a traveling merchant who _knows_ that this isn’t useless sludge and will buy it from us. ‘Sides, the guy who invented this stuff is dead; this bait is much more valuable now.”

Bunng heard wings flapping, and grimaced when he looked up and saw a melanistic dragon floating through the skies remarkably low to the ground. Bunng set the container back inside the rucksack before grunting as he hauled the sack on his back.

“Plus, if we run outta water…I mean, guess we could drink it.”

“Definitely. Maybe if you drink enough, you’ll finally have your breath freshened.”

Bunng just scowled at Grovmar, while the grayish goblin grinned with all of his teeth showing. The goblins heard stomping nearby and turned to see Ogrell walking over to them, carrying his cudgel in one hand and his rucksack on his back.

“Goblins ready?”

“Yeeeeaaaahhh…what happened to you?” Bunng inquired.

The goblins looked at Ogrell’s body and frowned. Scratches were all over his pudge, his open shirt and pants were torn, and it looked as if someone dug their claws or nails against his face.

“Oh. These? Nomad ogres attacked. Monster came overnight. Kill ogres. Ogrell hear commotion. Try help.”

Ogrell shook his head. “All dead.”

“A monster showed up and damn near found our tent while we were sleeping?!” Krumvell shouted.

Ogrell slapped the cudgel in his hand a few times. “Ogrell chase off. Monster wounded.”

“Where did this happen?” Bunng asked.

Ogrell pointed to his left. “Yards away. Near trees.”

Bunng huffed as he began to stomp in the direction Ogrell pointed, much to the goblins’ confusion.

“Um, why are you walking _towards_ the dead bodies?” Groshlar asked.

“There might be a clue! C’mon, maybe we’ll know where this thing’s headed!”

The goblins didn’t have any other lead to go on, so they all followed Bunng through the plains, with Ogrell following them from behind. Once they reached the small set of trees that Ogrell pointed at, all of them stopped and saw three white-skinned ogres splayed all over the ground. Krumvell grimaced as he looked at the ogres’ corpses, surprised at how much fat had leaked out of their guts.

“ _Eugh_ …is _that_ what that looks like on the outside?” he asked.

“And yet people whine about how disgusting fecal matter is,” Groshlar said, rolling his eyes.

Bunng and Grovmar crouched down and inspected the bodies, swatting away some of the flies buzzing around them. One body looked mostly intact, but the eyes had been gouged out and the throat was slit. Another body was missing an arm, and its torso had been cut so deeply that the internal organs had been damaged. The third body was the worst one; the head was missing entirely, and the body’s ribcage had been broken open.

“Did you see what did this?” Grovmar asked.

Ogrell shook his head. “Too dark. Couldn’t know scent. Demon maybe. Large claws. Roared a lot.”

“And we slept through all that shit,” Groshlar said, stunned.

Bunng reached for the headless corpse and examined around the ribs. He looked inside the cadaver and grimaced with disgust.

“Geez…it sucked out some of this ogre’s organs.”

“Obviously a wyvern did this. We’ve seen about a dozen of them flying around here,” Krumvell suggested.

“No, a wyvern would just eat its prey whole, or bite off the chunks it wants.”

“As you should know, Bunng,” Groshlar added.

Bunng snorted after seeing Groshlar’s smug grin, but ignored him and kept looking at the bodies. “It’s too…clean. Look at this guy; he only got his throat slit. How does a monster gouge out an ogre’s eyes and slit his throat, but then mutilate the other two corpses? It doesn’t make any sense.”

As Grovmar and Bunng talked to each other, Krumvell looked at the ground and spotted flattened grass, and what seemed to be a trail leading away from the bodies.

“Hey, someone else was here,” he said.

Grovmar turned and looked at Krumvell. “How’d you know?”

“Grass is all flat. Can’t really make out footprints, but it looks like it’s leading west maybe?”

“Leads to lake,” Ogrell said. “Sanya gone there. Maybe find something,” Ogrell suggested.

“That works for me!”

Krumvell led the way as he looked at the tracks in the grass, sniffing the air and squinting occasionally to see if he could find any other clues around the field. The bearded goblin rubbed his nose and sniffled, while the other three goblins and ogre followed him through the fields. Everyone paused for a moment once they heard a beast roaring from the skies and spotted several shadows all appearing on the ground and looming around them. Several meters above them were multiple wyverns gliding through the air, smoke billowing from their nostrils or mouths.

“Are there supposed to be this many wyverns out there?” Grovmar asked.

“No. Drawn to smell. Not sure source,” Ogrell mentioned.

Grovmar turned as he looked at Bunng’s rucksack and blinked. “You left the cap on that bait, right?”

“It’s sealed up anyway, relax. ‘Sides, if all else fails, Ogrell’s stench will ward ‘em off,” he joked.

The group walked east for another ten minutes, relieved that they didn’t see any other wyverns or dragons polluting the skies. Eventually they heard the sound of water churning softly, followed by faint splashes. Everyone looked beyond a small field of thick bushes and spotted the lake, which was much smaller than the goblins anticipated; it only seemed to be a few hundred miles wide in diameter, and was barely bigger than a common pond. As the group approached the muddy shoreline, they spotted a lanky creature dressed in a black wool shirt and tattered brown shorts standing in the mud. The group froze. Krumvell sniffed the air and scrunched up his face.

“Ah, _fuck_. That looks like a murid,” Grovmar groaned.

“Doesn’t matter. He might know something,” Bunng added.

Before Krumvell could say anything, Groshlar shoved him forward, nearly causing him to fall down in the mud. “You go speak to him. We’ll, err, cover you from back here.”

Krumvell scoffed as he turned around and glared at Groshlar, but ultimately faced the murid and approached him. He had his back turned, but Krumvell could already tell he wouldn’t like what he would see from the front. Like all murids, this one looked like a giant bipedal rat, with shaggy brown fur, a long, fat pink tail, and footpaws and paws as opposed to regular feet and hands. From what Krumvell could tell, his fur was falling out, and one of his ears looked like it had been partially bitten off during some scuffle. The lanky creature breathed in a raspy tone, his ears twitching as he heard Krumvell approaching.

“Uh, hey, murid creature? I was wondering…”

The murid turned around, and Krumvell grimaced when he saw the state of him. His long muzzle looked crooked, some of his whiskers were missing, the teeth in his mouth were yellowed and chipping, and his claws were long and unkempt. The only part of the beast’s body that looked normal was his eyes, and even those were blood red.

“Yes, goblin? What do you desire?”

Krumvell backed away a bit when the murid approached him. Flies were hovering around his body, and the goblin could almost see the fleas that were hopping off his fur. The murid was holding a dead purplish fish in his paws and drooling. He looked down at the raw fish and bit its head off, crunching on the bones and flesh.

“Come to join me?”

Krumvell shook his head. “Um…n-no, thanks. Just wanted some questions answered.”

“Ask away,” he said, bits of fish flying from his maw. “Not diseased, no diseases in dear ol’ Rorrgarl’s body.”

Krumvell exhaled. “Oh good. I-I mean, I wasn’t gonna ask that! AHEM! What, uh…were you around this area last night?”

Rorrgarl nodded. “Slept under stars.”

“You slept outside, even with all these wyverns lurking about?”

“No wyvern mess with me. Many creatures hate the stench of our kind, hate stench of our blood and organs. Why do you ask?”

“Apparently some monster killed a couple ogres the other night. I don’t suppose you were responsible?”

Rorrgarl let out an eerie laugh, sounding as if he was hissing watery and spitting simultaneously. The rodent grinned widely as he dug into his pocket with his right paw and took out two small objects. It wasn’t until Krumvell leaned forward to look at the orbs that he realized the rat was holding two eyeballs by their optic nerves.

“Were you looking for these? Hmmm, seems like _your_ eyes still function.”

“So you did…wait a second, _how_ did you kill them? I don’t see no weapon on you.”

“Because I _didn’t_ kill them, goblin. I heard a commotion, yes. But when I went to go see what had happened, all I found were corpses.”

“Explain the eyeballs then.”

“Well, those ogres weren’t usin’ ‘em. Figured they wouldn’t mind if I ‘borrowed’ them.”

Without even pausing, Rorrgarl lifted the eyeballs into his mouth and bit down on the optic nerves. He slurped up the eyeballs as if they were wet noodles and started to chew, smacking on the eyeballs to the point where Krumvell heard two muffled pops. The bearded goblin gagged and visibly shuddered, shutting his eyes and turning his head away.

“Oh _gods_ …mmmmmmkay! I’ll just—um…AHEM! So do you know who or what killed those ogres?”

“Cave monster…many, many monsters in caves. Giant bats,” Rorrgarl said, before biting down on more fish. “Mysterious wraiths, ghosts ‘n’ demons. Perhaps a wild animal mauled those ogres. Who knows? So many mysteries in Glordale…”

“Which way is this cave?”

Rorrgarl pointed to his right and kept chewing. “Keep heading southeast. Strange sights ‘round those caves…strange smells too. Maybe monster. Maybe demon. Who knows?”

“Gotcha. Thanks!”

Rorrgarl nodded and resumed devouring his fish, while Krumvell walked back over to the group and exhaled.

“What’d he say?” Groshlar asked.

“He said he wants you to fuck him in the ass,” he joked.

Groshlar grimaced. “I’m not stickin’ my cock in that diseased rat’s repugnant tailhole.”

“Are you saying you _don’t_ want to fuck a male you’ve known for five seconds?”

“Shut your mouth!”

After Krumvell chuckled, he rubbed his nose and exhaled. “Anyways, he said he don’t know what killed ‘em. Apparently there’s some cave in the southeast that’s rumored to have evil creatures and monsters hiding in it.”

“Why should we go _towards_ a cave that might have a monster in it?! We got no weapons! How are we gonna defend ourselves?!”

“We could use—”

“If you say my breath, I’m gonna shove my foot up your ass!” Groshlar snarled.

Krumvell shut his mouth, mere seconds before Ogrell smiled and swung his cudgel a few times.

“Fear not, goblins. Ogrell here. Ogrell defend you, just like other night.”

“That big-ass stick ain’t gonna defend us if a monster as big as a wyvern attacks us,” Groshlar pointed out.

Ogrell nodded. Seconds afterwards, the ogre grunted a few times and crouched down, passing gas. Grovmar and Bunng curiously looked at Ogrell’s pants after hearing muffled crackling, and promptly shouted once they saw a huge lump forming. After Ogrell finished, the ogre exhaled and stood straight up, while all the goblins held their noses.

“There. Stench increased. Stench repel monsters. Stay by Ogrell; goblins be safe.”

“The stench is gonna repel us too, y’know!” Bunng complained.

Grovmar exhaled, still holding his nose. “Ah, fuck it. We’ve slept in wet garbage before; we can handle an ogre who shits himself.”

Ogrell nodded and began to walk away from the lake, while the goblins all made sure to keep their distance from the ogre as they followed him. Bunng looked at the ogre’s loaded trousers before snorting.

“So…let’s say the stench _doesn’t_ work. Is there some other benefit to outright shitting yourself?”

“Improvised weaponry.”

Ogrell looked down at Bunng with a leering smirk on his face. Bunng looked away from Ogrell and decided it was best to stop asking questions.

_____________________________

The group set up camp later that night once they had the mysterious cave within their sights. Ogrell set up tent again and began to check the perimeter, while all of the goblins had built a campfire and were busy roasting some of the meat that Ogrell brought along. With the sun having finally set, the group was on high alert again. Bunng kept looking around the grassy plains for any kind of queer or monstrous shadows in the distance. Krumvell’s ears twitched as he listened to the grasshoppers and other insects chirping away in the night, and every so often would sniff the air to see if some strange scent filled his lungs. Grovmar would look at the skies, constantly checking that no wyverns were going berserk or catching their scent. Groshlar wasn’t concerned about any monster though, and was paying more attention to the meat sizzling in the pan in front of him.

“Get the bread out. Looks like it’s done now,” Groshlar barked.

Krumvell nodded and began to remove slices of wheat bread from his rucksack, while Grovmar looked at Bunng and noticed he was scraping a rock against a blunt object and occasionally grunting as he struck it.

“The hell you doing?”

Bunng set down the rock and looked at the object. “Trying to sharpen this bone.”

“What, that one Groshlar plucked from that dragon’s mouth? Why you still got that?!”

“Hey, we’re gonna need it. We don’t have any knives with us; if a monster shows up, we should probably have _something_ at least. If I can get it right, maybe we can use one end like a spear or something. Or like those weapons against vampires—stake to the heart and all that.”

Grovmar shrugged. “If you say so.”

Krumvell handed each of the goblins two slices of bread, shortly before he picked up the pan and dumped various chunks of meat onto one slice each goblin carried. All of them quickly set the second slice of bread on top of the meat and felt the steam and heat warming up the bread. They waited a few seconds for the meat to cool down before they all began to bite into their makeshift sandwiches.

“You know,” Bunng said, mouth full, “I’m getting some funny feeling here.”

“That’s called ‘gas,’ Bunng,” Groshlar joked.

“Not _that_.” Bunng swallowed. “This whole quest we’re on. Sanya has been gone a week, correct?”

“Yeah,” Grovmar answered. 

“Don’t you think it’s odd that Ogrell hasn’t picked up her scent, let alone found any trails she left behind?”

“Ogres are stupid, Bunng,” Grovmar said, before biting into his sandwich again. “Probably why he needs help from other people.”

“And yet he’s smart enough to write out a contract, and smart enough to correctly use ‘pestilence’ and ‘deceased’ in a sentence.”

“That’s not all that weird,” Krumvell replied. “If it hadn’t been for me, none of you would’ve noticed those murid tracks in the ground. And yet I can’t read, and neither can Groshlar. People aren’t skilled in everything.”

Bunng paused for a moment, and then bit down into his sandwich again and resumed chewing. “Maybe…maybe I’m overthinking all this. Maybe some monster did just drag Sanya away into a cave.”

“We’ll find out tomorrow,” Groshlar replied. “And we’ll be a thousand coins richer by then.”

The four goblins sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the grasshoppers chirping again while also watching as the fire crackled and sent a couple of sparks their way. When Krumvell finished with his sandwich, he spread his legs forward and took a deep breath.

“I’ve been thinking actually…about the money. Have y’all decided what you wanna do with it?”

“Brothel,” Groshlar said, smirking.

Krumvell rolled his eyes. “Of course you’d fucking say that. What about you two?”

“I’m still more concerned about finding Sanya and how this’ll all play out,” Bunng replied.

Grovmar, meanwhile, nodded. “We’re heading to Tovvol after this. They got all sorts of ships coming and going from that city’s harbor. We’ll rent a cheap boat, head to another country—maybe Erelorn, I dunno. Try to find a place to live at, try to get some kind of jobs I guess.”

“Doing what, scooping up shit in the streets of Lornvale? I’m not doing that, Grov.”

“Well then what bright idea do _you_ have?”

“Let’s all just stay here.”

Grovmar chuckled. “That’s not happening.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t wanna live in a country that outsiders have nicknamed ‘Smirvlak’s Anus.’ We’re metaphorically living inside of a demon’s butt hole. How is that _not_ depressing?”

“We can still enjoy ourselves inside of an asshole, Grov. I already suggested it to Grosh the other day. We could head back to that orchard we came across! We’ll have a thousand coins; that’s more than enough money to buy supplies and tools we need to build our own cottage! It’s still summer; we got many months ahead of us before winter arrives.”

“Krum, I really don’t think Glordale is a safe place to live. Especially for people like us.”

“No place is a safe place to live. There’s a war going on every other year; there’s a plague in this country; there’s famine in that country; there’s shit happening all the time! What’s the worst thing about Glordale? That it stinks all the time? That the people in this country got no hygiene? So what? I’d rather live in a smelly asshole—shut up, Grosh.”

Groshlar shut his mouth before he could make a joke.

“…Anyway, I’d rather live here, in what people call some ‘demon’s smelly asshole,’ than live somewhere like Erelorn, where you all know people will look at us and just assume we’re thieves or that we’re there to sully the kingdom with our mere presence.”

Grovmar finished his sandwich and swallowed. “That won’t work, Krum.”

“Why not?!” he asked, almost in a whiny voice.

“World’s more complicated than that. You can’t just build a house and live happily ever after. Life not that—”

“Right, sorry, right. Yeah. You’re right.” Krumvell shut his eyes and let out a frustrated breath as he massaged his eyeballs with his fingers. “You’re always fucking right.”

Grovmar scowled and snorted. “Don’t you snap at me,” he snarled. “I didn’t make the world the way it is now. I just tell it like it is.”

“Sure. Whatever. Didn’t expect you guys to listen to me anyways.”

Sighing, Krumvell stood up and snorted as he walked towards the tent. “I’m tired. Wake me up when it’s morning.”

Once Krumvell disappeared between the tent flaps, the remaining three goblins all looked at each other and frowned.

“Fuck’s his problem? Usually the only thing he whines about is how long it is until we get our next meal,” Groshlar asked.

Grovmar shook his head. “You know how he is. Everything’s gotta be ‘easy’ for him, and when it’s not he gets frustrated and has to pout about it.”

“I think we’re _all_ frustrated, Grov,” Bunng stated. “Over everything.”

“I’m not,” Groshlar casually remarked.

“Course _you_ aren’t,” Grov snidely remarked.

“…Fuck does that mean?”

“Means the world’s easy to manage when you walk around thinking with your cock all the time.”

“And yet I’m the only one outta the four of us who isn’t whining like a little bitch. How ‘bout that?”

The three goblins all stared at each other, with Groshlar eventually folding his arms and scowling at his brother. Grovmar, knowing where this argument was heading, stood up and started kicking dirt into the fire to extinguish.

“Maybe we should all get some sleep. We’ll feel better in the morning.”

Bunng shrugged. “If you say so.”

____________________________

The goblins were still tense, even after they undressed and tried to go to sleep. Groshlar was snoring and looking peaceful as ever, while Krumvell slept away from the group, deciding to keep to himself. Bunng lied down away from Grovmar, while the grayish-green goblin looked over at Krumvell and frowned. Trying to cheer him up, he crawled over to the light green beast and started to fondle around his groin, grasping his penis and rubbing his testicles. Krumvell snarled in his sleep and kicked Grovmar away, and the grayish-green goblin blinked and left Krumvell alone. After a few hours, everyone had finally passed out. Bunng, however, was constantly grunting and rolling around in his sleep. He gritted his teeth and subconsciously crossed his legs, feeling as if his bladder was inflating. Suddenly, still half asleep, Bunng opened his eyes and sat up, feeling like his groin was about to explode. He hurried outside the tent, ignoring all of the chirping bugs and using only the moon as a source of light, until he stopped and pulled down his underwear.

Bunng exhaled with relief as he started to urinate, letting the fluids splash into the dirt as he looked around, still wondering why Ogrell hadn’t shown up yet. He waited until he finished and yanked his underwear back up, retreating to the tent. Just as he saw the tent’s silhouette, he heard muffled snorting and snarling in the distance. Rubbing his eyes and mumbling, Bunng turned around and followed the source.

“Mmf…Ogrell?” Bunng said, his throat dry. 

The yellow goblin wandered over to where he was hearing the abnormal noises, his ears twitching as the sounds increased. Bunng sniffed the air a few times and murmured softly, unable to place the odd scents that were filling his lungs. He approached a tree and saw another silhouette in the distance, one that seemed to be shaping some kind of blob-like entity. Bunng clung to the tree and peeked around the bark, staring at the giant beast as it snarled and chewed on flesh. The blob jerked its right arm from its mouth, tearing off a hunk of flesh. It wasn’t until Bunng stared at the arm more closely that he noticed the arm was gripping another arm in its hand. Bunng sniffed the air again, and his eyes grew wide. He backed away from the bloated beast, making sure he didn’t make too much noise, and immediately headed back into the tent and lied down. Not even fifteen seconds afterwards, something sprinted towards the tent and stepped inside, snorting and growling, hot breath flowing from its mouth. Bunng pretended to be asleep, his eyes closed and his chest naturally rising and falling.

The goblin didn’t open his eyes; he didn’t want to give away that he was really awake. So he lied still, listening as Grovmar mumbled a few times, while Groshlar emitted a soft chuckle in his sleep and rustled around a bit. After a brief moment, Bunng could feel something hovering over his body. The entity growled deeply, looming above the yellow beast; Bunng assumed the creature was staring at him. The beast lowered its head, sniffing Bunng several times. Bunng tried his hardest not to visibly grimace when the creature opened its mouth, subjecting him to hot, disgusting breath and warm drops of saliva that dripped all over his head. The beast leaned down and licked Bunng against his cheek slowly, running its fat tongue all over his face. Still, Bunng didn’t move, even after the creature repeated the gesture two more times. Then Bunng felt fingers lightly grazing his big belly, and the creature growled with joy, almost chuckling to itself afterwards. But just like the night before, the creature didn’t do anything malicious. It turned around and left the tent, leaving the goblins in peace.

Only this time around, Bunng had a clear idea of what the creature was.


	6. Don’t Drink

Everyone woke up at dawn again, thanks to Ogrell’s noisy behind once more. While Grovmar and Krumvell were busy groaning about the smell and putting on their clothes, Groshlar was panting as he furiously tugged on his erection. Grovmar put on his brown shirt before he looked at Groshlar and blinked.

“Grosh. Slow down. You’re gonna tear it off,” he mumbled.

Groshlar just looked over his shoulder and smirked at his brother, but continued to masturbate anyway. Grovmar ignored his brother and looked over at Bunng, who was sitting on the ground gently rubbing his chin with a few fingers. Afterwards, the yellow goblin grunted as he reached over and started to put on his beige trousers.

“Bunng. You okay?” Grovmar asked.

Bunng stared at Grovmar as he stood up, then turned and looked at Krumvell and Groshlar. “You two hear or see anything last night?”

Krumvell shook his head. “Crickets and grasshoppers. Nothing unusual.”

Groshlar, having finished stroking himself, pulled up his underwear and began to put on his vest and black pants.

“Heard Grovmar snoring like a bear. Think I heard you farting in your sleep a few times,” he replied, before chuckling.

“Besides that. You three didn’t hear any growling…or chewing?”

“No. Why?” Grovmar asked.

Bunng tightened his jaw, looking confused. Then he shook his head a bit and sniffed.

“I’m still thinking about it…something feels off here.”

“Whatcha mean?”

“I dunno, there’s just…this entire contract; it doesn’t…feel right.”

Grovmar opened his mouth to ask another question, only for Ogrell to stomp towards the tent and stick his head inside.

“Goblins ready? Walk soon. Need to move.”

Grovmar nodded. “Yeah, yeah, we’re ready.”

The ogre nodded and left the tent, while Bunng stared at the ogre and squinted at him.

________________________________

They walked through the plains for a few hours, the sun’s rays shining down on the group once again as they hauled the rucksacks around. None of them encountered any dangers or any special landmarks of any kind yet, although somewhere in the distance, the group could see a massive rocky formation that overshadowed all the small hills around them. The path they were walking on split off into two separate parts: one leading away from the formation to more seemingly endless plains, and another that led directly towards the giant rocky structure. Ogrell led the goblins towards the rocky structure, smiling as he stomped around the ground.

“There. Small mountain. Big hill. Lots of grass cover. Cave murid said. Cave must be here.”

“Good. Hopefully we’ll find your daughter and we can finally get our damn coins,” Groshlar remarked.

As the group made their way towards the mountain, Bunng walked slowly, still sharpening and scraping at the bone with a rock, which was now getting sharp at one end. He looked up at Krumvell, Groshlar, and Grovmar and walked up to them.

“Psst! Hey, slow down,” he whispered.

“Why you talkin’ like that?” Krumvell questioned.

“Just—shut up. Keep walking, but slow down.”

The other three goblins did as requested, and they walked slower than usual as they huddled around Bunng.

“What is it?”

Bunng took a few deep breaths as he wiped his forehead and stared at Ogrell. “That plan where we kill Ogrell, takes his money—y’all still okay with doing that?”

“Hell yeah,” Groshlar said.

“Not really,” Krumvell disagreed.

“Um, well, that’s-that’s kinda last resort. Why?” said Grovmar.

“Because I think he’s fucking with us. This whole—everything is off. His missing daughter, those dead ogres—none of this adds up.”

“You sure you’re not being paranoid?”

“No! Something’s wrong with Ogrell! He can’t grammatically form sentences correctly and-and can’t speak in first person, yet he knows what ‘cordiality’ and ‘pestilence’ mean, and can use them in a sentence?”

“So he knows a few big words. Big deal. We talked about this last night,” Krumvell said.

Bunng huffed. “Okay, well, what about his daughter? She’s all this ogre has left. Yet I barely hear him talk about her. Even when we first met him, he talked about her like-like she was just some _thing_ a buncha bandits stole.”

“Maybe their relationship is estranged,” Grovmar challenged. “That’s not uncommon.”

“What about the bodies? Huh? A monster shows up in the middle of the night, kills three ogres, wounds Ogrell, and conveniently runs away and leaves no other evidence behind? You all saw that one body; his throat had been cut. With some kind of sword or knife. And I didn’t see a _single_ claw mark on any of those bodies.”

“…Well, maybe the murid did it. You know how they’re always—”

“Wait, Rorrgarl?” Krumvell asked. “He didn’t do that.”

“How would you know?” Groshlar asked.

“Because he told me without hesitation that he gouged out one of those dead ogres’ eyes. He ate them right in front of me! Why would he lie about killing them when he told me the truth about mutilating one of the corpses? C’mon, you all saw him; that rat was skinnier than all of us. Those ogres would’ve literally snapped him in half.”

Grovmar rubbed his forehead and took a deep breath. “Look, none of this proves—”

“Last night, after you all fell asleep, I got up in the middle of the night to take a piss,” Bunng continued. “I saw something eating an arm. Some kind of giant, fat, blobby _thing_. Now tell me something we’ve come across recently that’s fat and blobby.”

The goblins stopped walking entirely. All of them looked at Ogrell as he slowly advanced towards the mountain, while Bunng kept speculating.

“And on top of that, when I went back into the tent, something snuck in and licked my face. And then it just left. Why the fuck would a monster crawl into our tent, lick one of us, and leave?”

Groshlar looked down at the sharpened bone Bunng was carrying. He scowled, and immediately snatched the bone from his hands and stomped in Ogrell’s direction. Grovmar stammered and rushed in front of his brother, holding up his hands.

“Wait—hold on, Grosh!”

“Get the fuck out my way,” he snarled.

“No!”

“Bunng just told us that Ogrell murdered some ogres and is trying to fuck us over. We’re killing him!”

“Okay, okay, there’s something wrong with this whole situation—I’ll agree on that. That doesn’t mean Ogrell is responsible!”

“Are you fucking serious? What more proof do you need?!”

“Look, we—the bodies. That one we saw with its throat slit? How could that have been Ogrell when all he has is a cudgel? Wouldn’t some of the heads been bashed in or something?”

“Grov,” Bunng said, his voice stern. “Some _one_ killed those ogres. Not some _thing_.”

“How do you know it wasn’t one of the ogres from that tribe we saw? That one ogre—um, Odlar? He looked at Ogrell as if he knew him. How do we know Odlar doesn’t have some secret vendetta against Ogrell? How do we know that Odlar didn’t kill those ogres the other night? For all we know, Ogrell was trying to _save_ those ogres and he nearly died in the process.”

“He seems rather calm about the whole ordeal…” Krumvell added, sounding equally suspicious.

Grovmar exhaled and ran a hand through his hair. “One more day. If we don’t get the money by tomorrow morning, or if Ogrell does anything else weird, or if we don’t find Sanya, we kill him. If we’re wrong about this, and there’s some other person stalking us, and we kill the strongest ally we got right now, we’re all fucked.”

Groshlar groaned and rolled his eyes as he stuffed the bone into his rucksack. “Fine, _fine_. We’ll wait another day. But if I find out—”

“Something wrong goblins?”

Grovmar yelped when he spotted Ogrell walking towards them. He coughed as he involuntarily swallowed some of his saliva and wiped his mouth off a bit. 

“No…yes. We were just arguing, that’s all. Just…it’s been stressful for the four of us these last few days.”

“The heat’s not helping,” Krumvell casually added.

The ogre smiled casually and nodded as he stepped off the path. “Come. Rest now. No eat after wake. Eat and drink now.”

The goblins were still being cautious of the ogre, but nonetheless would be lying if they all said they weren’t hungry. So all of them sat down in the field of grass, taking off their rucksacks and relaxing their shoulders. Ogrell grunted as he removed two black bottles of wine from his sack, both of which were almost a quart full. The fat beast removed the cap off one bottle and started to drink from it, shortly before taking off the other cap.

“Wine eh? You been holding out on us, Ogrell?” Groshlar asked.

The ogre laughed. “Special occasion. Want save. Can drink early though.”

Ogrell lifted the second bottle and held it in front of Bunng’s face. Bunng chuckled meekly and shook his head.

“I’m good, thanks. We’ll all drink it together once we find your daughter.”

“Insist. Make goblins feel better. Drink.”

“I don’t really—ACK!”

Bunng coughed and choked when Ogrell nearly shoved the top of the bottle down the back of Bunng’s mouth. The yellow goblin’s eyes widened as some of the sweet and tart fluids were forced down his gullet. When Ogrell took the bottle away, Bunng spluttered a few times and wiped his mouth off, while the other goblins looked at Ogrell suspiciously.

“Good?”

Bunng nodded and coughed a few more times. “Oof…shit. Went down _real_ smooth; the hell kinda wine is that?”

Ogrell winked. “Special. Opiates in bottle. Make drinker feel good.”

Groshlar looked at the bottle and shrugged. “Screw it.”

He grabbed the bottle and took a long swig from it, gulping multiple times before he wiped his mouth and sniffled. Feeling more comfortable, Krumvell and Grovmar gulped down their own sufficient portion of the wine as well, smacking their lips and feeling a lot less stressed once the fluids entered their stomachs. When Grovmar handed the bottle back to Ogrell, the ogre sighed as he set the bottle down and looked at the goblins.

“Goblins no trust Ogrell,” he said abruptly.

Bunng spluttered again. “What?”

“Mm…heard some talk. Saw huddle. Goblins…goblins no trust Ogrell.”

“That’s-that’s not true,” Krumvell replied. “We’re just…um…we’re just…worried…”

Grovmar shut his eyes and rubbed them for a moment. He inhaled sharply and let out a huge breath, shaking his head.

“Yeah…yeah, Ogrell. This whole…things are escalating…those ogre bodies…”

“Shit, this fuckin’ heat,” Groshlar said, before grasping his head.

Krumvell smiled tenderly. “Ogrell, if anything, you…heh, you shouldn’t trust _us_. Why wouldn’t we trust you?”

“Because I’m not a trustworthy person.”

They all knew right then and there. His voice, his speech—it changed instantly. He still had the same deep voice, but it was softer now, more menacing. All four goblins noticed how he didn’t refer to himself by his name either. Bunng looked at Ogrell with wide eyes, and then looked down at the wine bottle. When he looked back up at Ogrell, he was grinning at all of them.

“ _Fuck_.”

Grovmar coughed. “You…you-ya…you said ‘I’m’ then…you didn’t say ‘Ogrell not trustworthy person.’ Why…why did…”

“Fucker…” Groshlar mumbled, before he coughed and slouched forward, collapsing on the ground.

Ogrell sighed heavily as he scratched the back of his neck. “I was gonna wait, y’know. We were almost at the caves. But the fat one here—he…he just wouldn’t _stop_ looking at me funny. Was gonna kill him earlier, but nah. You three would’ve known something was wrong then.”

Grovmar collapsed next. He didn’t get back up. Bunng whimpered as he stood up and tried to walk towards Groshlar’s rucksack so he could remove the sharpened bone. He couldn’t take a single step before he fell flat on his stomach, the whole world spinning around him.

“What…those ogres…” Krumvell coughed.

“Killed ‘em. Had to. Odlar must’ve eventually recognized who I was. Suppose he thought it was a coincidence that I approached his tribe last spring, and then both I and his son mysteriously went missing. Guess he sent some ogres in his tribe to kill me. And you all saw how well that turned out.”

Krumvell whimpered gently as he listed over and fell on his side, his eyes closing slowly as he lost consciousness. Bunng grunted as he tried to crawl towards the rucksack with the bone inside of it, but he could feel all the muscles in his body relaxing as his body shut down. The yellow goblin had just enough time to see the orange ogre stand up and walk towards him.

“Relax, goblin. I’ve no intention of killing you.”

“That…that’s what worries me…”

Bunng had just enough time to hear Ogrell laugh to himself. And then he shut his eyes, and everything went black.

___________________________

No flies this time. Just dampness and a numb feeling in their throats. The goblins all found themselves coughing or snorting, dribbling as they lied down on the cold floor. Fire crackled behind them gently, giving off faint light. When one of the goblins opened their eyes, they mumbled and looked to their right, only to see a series of long, cylindrical metal poles stuck within the ceiling and floor. 

“Mmf…hello? Ugh…hey…hey!”

Grovmar coughed as he sat up and looked at the bars, rubbing his eyes and noticing a bitter taste in the back of his throat. He sluggishly stood up, legs still feeling wobbly, as he dragged his feet towards the bars.

“Wait…this ain’t…” Groshlar mumbled as he began to wake up.

Shortly after Groshlar began to talk, Bunng gasped and sprang awake, body covered in sweat. He frantically stood up, only to fall back down and grunt as hot breath exploded from his mouth.

“FUCK!” Bunng shouted.

Groshlar rubbed his eyes and looked around. He noticed the bars too, and frowned once he recognized the cage-like structure. He sniffed the air a couple of times, standing up and curling his toes against the floor. When he looked up at the walls, he could see that two torches had been lit, each one positioned just outside of the cell so it provided enough light, but prevented any of them from reaching it. Groshlar rubbed his feet against the rocky, rough terrain and exhaled.

“Wurf…where are we?” Krumvell asked, as he began to wake up.

“We’re in that fuckin’ cave in the mountain…fuckin’ cocksucker,” Groshlar snarled.

Grovmar grunted as he grabbed the bars and tried to wrench them free multiple times. They didn’t even so much as rattle. Grovmar panted as he looked at the metal obstruction in front of him, shortly before he spotted a section of the bars that looked like a door, and even had a keyhole in it. While he inspected the door, Bunng looked around the cell, trying to see what other supplies they had with them. Miraculously, Ogrell left all of their rucksacks in the cell. He immediately ran over and opened them all up, disappointed to see that nothing was inside except for the edible, non-perishables they brought along. The sharpened bone was missing though.

“Goddamn it,” Bunng snarled. “He took the bone.”

Krumvell stood up and let his nostrils widen, shortly before his stomach growled. “Hey, you guys smell that?”

“It’s a cave, Krum. There’s a lotta things…”

Groshlar stopped talking. He, Bunng, Grovmar, and Krumvell all sniffed the air again and looked around the cave. Then they spotted four clay bowls sitting near the wall, filled with thick fluids and chunks of meat. Without even hesitating, all four of them scrambled to get a bowl, and promptly started to gobble down the contents inside with the spoons provided. None of them were sure what kind of soup they were eating, and the bowl was already starting to cool after sitting out for some time. But all of them slurped up the juices and ate the chunks of meat as quickly as possible, without even chewing in some cases.

“Fucker fucking fucked us!” Groshlar bellowed, spitting out juices. 

Bunng blinked. “Well. That’s one way of saying it.”

Grovmar licked some of the juice from his spoon and panted. “I don’t—I don’t understand. The contract said he just wanted to find his daughter. We don’t even know Ogrell; why the hell’s he doing this?!”

“Maybe we should check our assholes,” Krumvell suggested.

Everyone stopped eating to look over at Krumvell, who was still casually devouring his soup. He paused when he witnessed his goblins staring at him.

“What? Isn’t this how it goes? Some big, brawny person drugs his victims, then sodomizes them for months, and kills them afterwards. So we should check our assholes.”

“THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR THAT!” Grovmar shouted.

Krumvell shrugged. “All right.”

“I’ve been fucked in the ass more than you three combined,” Groshlar commented. “I know what it feels like after I’ve been sodomized! This just…argh, just feels like I drank too much…”

“Then what the fuck is Ogrell doing?!” Grovmar demanded.

Groshlar talked with his mouth full, angrily munching on a few giant chunks of meat. “I dunno. But as soon as I find some kind of tool, I’m gonna jam—”

 _CRUNCH_.

“MMPH!”

Groshlar immediately spat on the floor, coughing and spluttering when he looked at the contents he spat up. Much to his horror, two teeth were lying on the cave floor.

“Fuck…course this motherfucker would put bones in this!”

“Just slow down, brother. I keep telling you you’ll lose all your teeth—ack, PLAH!”

Grovmar spat on the floor too, and was disturbed at the sight of one of his teeth sitting on the floor.

“Wait…whuh?”

Groshlar smirked. “What were you saying about my oral hygiene?”

Before the Grollear brothers could start arguing, Krumvell grunted as he spat on the ground too. He stopped eating temporarily and stuck his fingers around his mouth, checking to see which tooth he just spat out.

“The hell? I don’t…I don’t feel nothing missing,” Krumvell responded.

Bunng immediately stopped eating. He swallowed the mouthful of meat before poking his spoon down into the soup several times. Feeling something solid at the bottom, Bunng dropped the spoon and dug his fingers into the sludge. He grabbed the hard object and pulled it out. His eyes widened to the size of saucers, and immediately afterwards, he retched.

“Oh gods,” Grovmar whimpered.

Groshlar dropped his bowl, not caring that it shattered on the floor and splashed the soup all over his feet. Bunng was holding up a human jaw, with some of the teeth still intact. Grovmar immediately checked his soup to see if he’d find a jaw too. While the goblin was happy he didn’t pick up a mandible, he was equally disgusted when he found a finger with the nail torn off amongst all the flesh. Bunng dropped the jaw on the floor while Grovmar started retching and coughing, sounding as if he was trying to induce vomiting. 

“What is this sick—KRUM! STOP EATING!” Groshlar exclaimed.

Krumvell smacked noisily before he gulped and blinked. “Why?”

“YOU’RE EATING HUMAN FLESH!”

Krumvell blinked as he looked at the hunk of flesh within his spoon. He examined the broth the chunks of meat were simmering in, and could tell that it was reddish-brown, almost looking like blood. The bearded goblin stared at the soup and sniffed. And then he put the chunk of meat in his mouth anyways. Groshlar scoffed as he stomped towards Krumvell and slapped the bowl out of his hands, causing it to shatter.

“What?!” Krumvell asked defensively.

“Why are you still eating?!”

“Yo-you said it was human meat, not goblin meat! That doesn’t make us cannibals!”

“That doesn’t mean we’re supposed to fuckin’ eat it!”

“OGRELL!” Bunng screamed.

While Grovmar was on his knees still trying to throw up, Bunng snatched a rock up from the floor and started to bang it against the bars. The metal clanged cacophonously, and the resulting din echoed throughout the caves.

“OGRELL! GET OVER HERE AND SHOW YOURSELF, YOU FAT FUCK!”

Bunng stopped banging the rock against the bars and stood still, panting and waiting for the ogre to show himself. When the four goblins all heard heavy footsteps in the distance, they saw the faint silhouette of a blobby figure holding a torch in his left hand as he stomped through the cave. All of them spotted Ogrell’s blubbery, immense rolls of fat and the breasts that were sagging around his chest immediately. The goblins all noticed that Ogrell was also carrying what seemed to be a skull in his right hand. Ogrell licked his rotting teeth as he approached the cell and smirked.

“Calm down, goblin. No need to shout.”

“Fuck you! Why the fuck do you have us locked up in here?!”

“Why haven’t you just killed us yet, you piece of shit?!” Groshlar shouted.

“Why did you feed us that delicious—”

Bunng and Groshlar glared at Krumvell, causing him to stammer.

“Eh—but-but still revolting, bowl of soup with human flesh in it?”

Grovmar was the only goblin not to say anything. He was whimpering silently and shaking, sitting down with his back pressed against the bars. Ogrell looked at Grovmar and chuckled.

“Seems like this one here already knows.”

Bunng flicked his eyes down at Grovmar before he looked at Ogrell again and closed his eyes. He thought back to the contract that he saw on the board, and scoffed, shaking his head.

“You didn’t lose your daughter. You don’t even have one, do you?” he guessed.

“Oh no, Sanya’s real. In fact,” Ogrell said, as he slammed the object in his right hand against the bars, “she’s right here!”

Everyone gasped as they looked at the skull, disturbed by how decayed it was and the various missing teeth and lower jaw. After the goblins got a good look at the skull, Ogrell took it away and looked at it himself.

“Yes…beauty, ain’t she?”

“She’s dead,” Krumvell bluntly pointed out.

“Yeah, well, she brought it on herself.”

Groshlar scoffed. “What happened? She got tired of suckin’ your cock, so she tried to fight back one night—”

“No, no, you’ve got it all wrong! I never raped my daughter—never even thought about it! But Sanya…mm. She was a bad egg, that one. Her mother always coddled her, and she grew up and turned into an ungrateful bitch. Always complaining, always whining, always arguing with her parents whenever she had the chance.”

“You killed her?” Bunng asked.

“Course I did. I tried taking her out camping with me. Just some good ol’ father and daughter time. No one else but the wilderness surrounding us. Naturally, she started whining and bitching, talking about how she got a rash, how her feet were tired, how…”

Ogrell paused. He looked at the skull in disgust and scoffed, shaking his head. “I just grabbed her throat. And I squeezed. And I kept squeezing until I heard a faint crack. I was…admittedly I was a little shocked at first. Just killed my own daughter and all that. Didn’t want anyone to catch me. But as I stood there, looking at this bitch’s fat body that was gradually cooling, you wanna know what I told myself?”

“‘It’d be a shame to waste all this meat,’” Krumvell grimly replied.

Ogrell burst out into a fit of laughter, his chunky belly gurgling and shaking. He almost dropped the torch he was carrying and had to steady himself so he wouldn’t fall over.

“That’s exactly right, goblin! Y’see, we’re on the same page here!”

“None of us ate our fucking relatives, you piece of shit!” Groshlar shouted.

Ogrell shrugged. “You goblins aren’t known for your kindness, I’ll say that much. Anyways, when I got home, I told my wife our daughter died. She, obviously, blamed me. She got angry, and then depressed… _very_ depressed. And so I told her, ‘if you want to die so badly, let me help you.’ So I killed and ate her too. Thing is, after I consumed my family, I realized just how tender and…unique humanoid flesh is. No four-legged animal’s meat can compare to the taste of an ogre, or a human, or even a fucking stilio for that matter.”

“Fuck’s sake…so-so what, you just—you post fake contracts on the board in Layric Town, lure all your victims into your web so you can suck their blood?”

“‘Ogrell need help. Ogrell lost daughter. Ogrell dumb…no find child without help.’ S’all I gotta say! No one’s gonna suspect a simple-minded ogre to be conspiring some evil shit! No one’s gonna believe that a creature who voluntarily shits himself is a homicidal cannibal. When that doesn’t work, or when I get impatient, I just start exploring the fields. S’not hard really. Li’l girl picking flowers here, small couple having a picnic in the orchards there…they never suspect me.”

There was a brief pause, and then Grovmar swallowed and finally spoke in a soft voice.

“How long?” he asked.

Ogrell shrugged. “Long enough for me to lose track. As I told the hairy one over here, Ogrell _loves_ to eat.”

The ogre licked his lips and laughed, while all the goblins in the cell just glared at him with scorn. Ogrell tossed his daughter’s skull up and down as he exhaled.

“You all should be thanking Sanya! She’s the only reason why this all started. I always keep her here in these caves with me, as a reminder of just how scrumptious the flesh of sentient, humanoid creatures can be.”

Groshlar spat in Ogrell’s direction. “I’m gonna kill you, you fuck—”

“No, no, _no_ ,” Ogrell said, interrupting Groshlar. “None of that. Stay calm. Relax. I’ve no intention of torturing you. Or raping you. I wanna make sure all of you are safe…safe and happy. And well-fed! I was even kind enough to let you keep your food. So you four stay calm. And make sure you keep your strength up by eating! We gotta make sure you’re ‘safe’ and healthy.”

Ogrell crouched down and grinned as he looked at Bunng’s big belly. “ _Especially_ this one. Gotta make sure _nothing_ happens to this fat, chunky, delicious goblin.”

Ogrell chuckled softly as he drooled a bit, letting the saliva fall from his mouth for the other goblins to see. Everyone knew what the corpulent beast was implying, and their disgust for him augmented. The ogre was about to walk away from the cell when he looked over at a nearby stalagmite and growled.

“Oh. Almost forgot about this.”

Ogrell set down his torch and skull so he could pick up a container he had hidden between two stalagmites. Bunng squinted when he saw Ogrell unscrewing the cap, recognizing the clear object filled with yellowish-green fluids. When Ogrell took the cap off, he jerked the container forward multiple times, hurling all of the container’s contents into the cell, making sure it splashed all over the goblins. Everyone spluttered or backed away, coughing and wiping the sludge from their eyes as it dribbled all over their bodies. Ogrell tossed the container aside and picked up his torch and skull again.

“Please. Feel free to escape! I implore you to do so. Once you’re outside of these caves, the wyverns will swoop down and feast on your bodies. Some of my other victims managed to get out of their cells somehow and even managed to destroy the lock on the door leading into this cave. They didn’t even get a kilometer away from here before the wyverns came down and ravenously tore them to shreds. So, by all means, walk out this cave! I’ll just stay behind and watch those winged beasts feed.”

“But…” 

Krumvell thought for a moment, and then he shut his mouth. Ogrell couldn’t tell what the goblin was about to say, and he didn’t ask him to finish his sentence. So the ogre just turned and walked away from the cell, still chuckling to himself as he left them all alone. When Ogrell was completely out of their sights, Bunng turned around and looked at his companions.

“Okay…o-okay. Um, uh…fuck. There’s-there’s gotta be a hole or tunnel—”

“I’m not seeing one,” Grovmar replied softly.

“We could dig our way outta here!”

“With what, Bunng? Our bare hands?”

Bunng huffed. “I don’t see you thinking up anything!”

Grovmar shrugged. “We’re stuck in a cell in a cave. A cannibal wants to eat us. Don’t really see an option for escaping.”

“I say we all wait until the next time he feeds us. He can’t slide us bowls between the bars; he has to open up the door. Once he does, we’ll just rush him and beat his ass to death!” Groshlar suggested.

“Except Ogrell isn’t that stupid. S’why we’re here in the first place. Chances are he’ll only open the door when he’s carrying some kind of weapon. Even if it’s four against one, we’re not gonna last long against his cudgel, especially since he took our only weapon,” Grovmar commented.

Groshlar swore and kicked at a few pebbles on the floor, while Bunng looked at Krumvell and exhaled.

“What about you, Krum? Any ideas?”

“I dunno; um…starve ourselves?”

“Why would _that_ be a good idea?”

“You didn’t say ‘ _good_ ideas.’ You just said ‘ideas.’ ‘Sides, if we force ourselves to stop eating, eventually we’ll lose enough weight to a point where he won’t want to eat us.”

Bunng exhaled and shook his head. “No, that’s the same problem as trying to attack him head on. He’ll realize something’s wrong and he’ll just kill all of us.”

Bunng swore with frustration as he began to look around the cave, while Krumvell sat down in the corner and mumbled to himself, unsure if any of them would be able to survive down here for long. Groshlar snarled as he kept looking for any sort of weapon he could use, even if it was merely a rock lying on the ground. He picked one up and tossed it up and down a few times in his hand, and then dropped it. At best he could chuck it against Ogrell’s forehead, but that was about it. He kicked another rock in frustration, while Grovmar sat against the wall looking down at the floor, running his nail against the rocky terrain. Meanwhile, Bunng got down on his knees, panting as he started sifting through the contents of each rucksack. One contained bread; another had various mixed nuts inside; one had apples and pears in it, and the final one contained potatoes and the container full of wyvern bait. Bunng exhaled after emptying the rucksacks and picked up his canister of bait.

“Well…we still got our own wyvern bait…guess that’s something.”

“We’re all smothered in it now; who gives a shit?” Groshlar asked.

“Maybe…maybe we could use it to poison him?”

Bunng unscrewed the cap and took it off the canister. He immediately spluttered and shoved it back on, groaning and covering his nose.

“GAH, FUCK! The hell happened to that?! Smells like someone minced up a corpse and dumped it in here!”

“Maybe it went bad? We’ve been carrying it around for a few days now in the hot sun,” Krumvell suggested.

Bunng groaned. “So we got a can of sludge that smells like liquefied dead orcs. What now?”

Krumvell shrugged. “Poison the food? Try to make Ogrell eat it?”

“No, he’s gonna know something’s wrong if we try to make him eat _our_ food.”

“Maybe we should all drink it…just poison ourselves and be done with it,” Grovmar murmured.

“Don’t joke about shit like that. We’re not taking the coward’s way out, especially because of some twat like Ogrell,” Groshlar commented.

Grovmar shrugged. “Why not? Ogrell is gonna eat us anyways…maybe if our organs are poisoned, he’ll get poisoned too. Least he’ll die with us.”

“I would prefer an option that _doesn’t_ end with me dying!”

“Likewise,” Bunng added.

“Definitely,” Krumvell said too.

Grovmar smirked and shook his head. “Can’t help you. Seems like everything I do is my fault anyhow…don’t really see much point in cont…”

Grovmar stopped talking for a moment and looked at the canister again. He finally stood up from the floor and walked over to Bunng, scratching his chin.

“Drink it.”

“What?” Bunng asked. “No, I’m not doing that.”

“Yes, you are.”

“I just said this shit is spoiled! I don’t know what’s in this, but I’m better off eating rotten meat!”

“That’s the point! If you drink that, you _will_ get sick!”

“That’s not a good thing, Grov!”

“Yes, it is! Ogrell’s gonna eat you first; you’re the fattest out of all of us. Which means he’s gonna make sure nothing bad happens to you. If you get sick in here, he’s gonna have to take you out the cell and-and give you medicine or heal you somewhere else in the cave! And while you’re recovering, maybe…maybe, I-I dunno, you could sneak away? Or find a weapon? Or find the keys for the cell—do something!”

“How do you know he won’t lock me in another cell while he heals me?”

“I don’t.”

“Then why the fuck are you saying I should do this?!”

“We don’t have any other options, Bunng! We don’t have weapons; none of us know how to break this lock; none of us know how to fight an ogre who’s big enough to break our necks just by siting on our heads! What else are we supposed to do?!”

“Something that won’t put _me_ in danger!”

“We’re all in danger, you dumb fuck,” Groshlar snarled. “That ogre’s gonna kill us anyway and you know it. And he’s gonna start with _you_ first. Drink the fuckin’ bait!”

Bunng whimpered before he turned and looked at Krumvell. The red-bearded goblin blinked as he wiped his nose.

“I mean…it can’t get worse, Bunng. If this doesn’t work, we’ll be in the same spot we’re in right now. At least there’s a chance you could find the keys once Ogrell takes you out of the cell.”

“Or you could find a way to kill him. That works too,” Groshlar added.

“Damn it,” Bunng whined, as he slowly took the cap back off.

The yellow goblin took a few deep breaths as he looked inside the container, while Grovmar and Groshlar backed away, scowling and covering their noses.

“I am _not_ drinking all of this.”

“You don’t have to,” Grovmar said. “If that is as toxic as it smells, you only need to drink a small amount to get sick.”

Bunng let out a shuddering breath as he looked at the sludge again and grimaced.

“This better work…”

Bunng raised the canister up to his mouth and sighed again. Then he inhaled sharply, tilted the container backwards, and started to drink.


	7. Don’t Get Sick

“OGRELL!”

Groshlar grunted as he smashed the rock against the cell bars several times, hoping the metallic clanging noises would get the ogre’s attention. As he banged on the bars, Bunng was on his hands and knees, vomiting profusely all over the floor, much to Grovmar and Krumvell’s disgust.

“OGRELL! GET YOUR DIRTY ASS BACK HERE!”

Krumvell nervously rubbed his left arm and looked at Grovmar. “You don’t think…he’ll be fine, right?”

“Sure, yeah…sure. His body’s just trying to purge itself of the bait. He won’t—”

Bunng emitted more gurgling noises as he threw up again, shaking uncontrollably and whimpering as bile dripped from his lips.

“…He should be okay,” Grovmar said, reluctantly.

Groshlar was about to call out Ogrell’s name again when he spotted a faint orange light glowing in the distance. The light illuminated part of the cave as Ogrell finally showed up, still holding a torch in one hand. In his other hand, the ogre wielded a loaded crossbow. Once Ogrell got close to the goblins’ cell, everyone could see that he had a full quiver strapped to his back as well. Ogrell exhaled when he stood in front of the cell and looked at Bunng.

“Did you three do this?”

“Oh sure, yeah. Bunng was sucking my cock so hard I accidentally grazed his uvula with it,” Groshlar joked.

Ogrell rolled his eyes and ignored him, looking at the other two goblins instead.

“I-I don’t know what happened,” Krumvell whined. “He said he was feeling nauseous an hour ago. Then he-he just started vomiting and he hasn’t stopped!”

“Did you all take turns shoving your fingers down his throat?” Ogrell snarled.

“LOOK AT HIM!” Grovmar shouted. “His bile almost looks like it’s black! Normal vomit isn’t supposed to look like that!”

“Maybe if you hadn’t fed us human flesh…” Groshlar murmured.

Ogrell huffed. He walked over to the wall and set the torch inside of a holder for it, then turned back around as he reached around his pants and pulled off a set of keys. The goblins all watched as the ogre unlocked the door, trying to figure out which specific key he used to unlock the cell. Then Ogrell swiftly set the keys back on his pants and picked up the crossbow again. He opened the cell door slowly, listening to it creak as it moved. Once Ogrell could reach inside, he grabbed Bunng by his right leg and violently yanked him outside, not caring about all the stress he was under. Then he slammed the door shut and locked it back up before the goblins could try anything.

“What…what are you gonna do with him?” Krumvell asked.

“See what’s wrong, hope it’s nothing fatal. Can’t exactly eat tainted meat, now can I?”

Ogrell grunted as he picked up Bunng and hauled him over his left shoulder. He turned and grabbed the torch from the wall, shortly before he resumed walking his way throughout the cave.

__________________________________

Bunng kept his eyes open the whole time, trying to memorize any bizarre landmarks in the cave that would lead him back to his friends. He spotted a stalagmite that had the bones of what appeared to be a dead dwarf next to it. But afterwards, the path didn’t vary much; it was the same rocky walls, with a few stalactites dripping water onto the floor. Torches had been lit around the cave, but none stood out that Bunng could identify later on. He felt another wave of nausea coming, and instead of trying to hold it in, he opened his mouth and threw up on the floor. Ogrell paused for a moment and chuckled as he looked at Bunng.

“You poor thing. You really are sick, aren’t you?”

Bunng responded with a whimper, and he sniffled a few times as he felt Ogrell’s shoulder applying pressure on his stomach.

“Don’t you worry, goblin. Let ol’ Ogrell take care of you.”

Ogrell walked around the cave for another five minutes, and Bunng made sure to vomit again just so he’d be able to leave some kind of trail on the floor. Shortly afterwards, the two entered a small section of the cave with only one exit. The area was small, barely big enough for two people to fit into. Ogrell even had to crouch down so he wouldn’t hit his head against the rocky frame that led into the enclosure. When Ogrell got inside, he set his torch within one of the holders, set his crossbow down near the entrance, and threw Bunng’s body down onto a table. Bunng shouted and coughed up more bile, but pretended to be wounded and stayed very still. Meanwhile, Ogrell bent down as he examined a series of bottles and potions that were all resting on the floor.

“Hmm…you only vomiting, right? You ain’t got the trots?”

Bunng shook his head. “N-no…”

“And you don’t have other symptoms?”

“Little…little dizzy, but…”

“Ooh, good! Then it’s probably nothing major. Just some kind of food poisoning; maybe some bacterial infection, at worst.”

Bunng glanced over at Ogrell and saw him on his knees. He was grunting as he fidgeted with the various bottles. The yellow goblin took note of the keys dangling from the ogre’s pants, just as Ogrell stood up holding a bottle and vial. Bunng looked up at the ceiling and continued to shiver, acting a lot sicker than he actually was. When Ogrell stepped next to the table, he popped the top off the bottle, poured fluids into the vial until it was filled, and set the bottle down. Bunng looked at the light blue fluids inside of the vial and blinked, shortly before Ogrell shoved three of his meaty fingers into Bunng’s mouth and stretched his jaw down, opening his mouth. Bunng gurgled and mumbled as Ogrell dumped all the contents of the vial into Bunng’s mouth. Then he clamped the goblin’s mouth shut and sat him up, making sure the fluids went down and didn’t come back up.

“There! Don’t gotta vomit now, do ya?”

Bunng exhaled a few times and rubbed his forehead. “I’m…I’m still dizzy…”

“It’ll wear off. For now, I suggest you stay here and get some rest. You’ll feel much better after the potion works its way through your whole body.”

Ogrell walked over to the wall and removed the torch again, and then bent down and picked up his crossbow. Bunng looked at the ogre with wide eyes.

“Hold on—you’re just leaving me here? Unattended?”

Ogrell turned around and looked at Bunng with a smile on his face. “Of course! As you said yourself, you’re very, very sick. You should lay down, get some rest for a while. Then again, you could be faking this—which is why I’m about to go check up on your friends, to make sure _they_ aren’t trying anything either. But hey, feel free to wander around these caves that you have no knowledge of. Feel free to try and find the exit, which is locked with a cell door I installed, which only _I_ have the key for. Feel free to break the door down somehow, and wander around aimlessly outside.”

Ogrell paused and scratched his head, moments before he sucked on his teeth. “Oh, that’s right! I covered you all in wyvern bait! So even if you do manage to somehow escape this cave, you’ll have to deal with those pesky wyverns. And lemme tell ya, this bait is _potent_. The man who sold it to me said wyverns can smell it miles away, and the odor can last a whole week. So please…just lay down.”

The ogre shrugged. “Or don’t. Up to you.”

Bunng watched as the ogre turned around and walked out of the enclosure, leaving him alone in the poorly-lit cave. The goblin thought about getting up right then and there, but something told him that Ogrell was testing him. So he did as he was told, and he lied down for a good ten minutes, making sure he couldn’t hear or smell Ogrell anywhere nearby. Assuming the coast was clear, Bunng quietly stepped off the table, exited the enclosure, and found himself standing in a more spacious section of the caverns. Bunng climbed up a stalagmite, removed a torch from the wall, and grunted when he hopped back down. He looked forward, then behind, and forward again, and exhaled. Then he sniffed and walked forward, still having no idea which way he should be heading.

______________________________________

“Well, you goblins can all relax now,” Ogrell said, as he stepped over to the cell. “Seems like the fat one will be fine.”

“Good,” Grovmar said.

“Hmph.” Ogrell sat down on the floor in front of the cell, listening to the torches burning and the water plopping onto the floor. Every now and then, he’d look around, curious to see if other creatures like snakes or slow-moving insects were roaming on the floor. Then he looked back at Groshlar, who was sitting with his arms folded, while Grovmar and Krumvell were looking at the floor dejectedly.

“You three should be grateful. I haven’t even cut off your limbs yet. And look at it this way: at least you’ll be fed before I kill you.”

“What kind of person says you should be grateful that you _aren’t_ dead when said person still plans on torturing you?”

Ogrell turned and glared at Krumvell. “You are the last person to ask me that. I’ve seen you eat…like some feral, crazed beast you are. All you need is a little push…you just gotta eat a little more flesh, and soon you’ll understand.”

“I know I never killed anyone just so I could eat their flesh!”

“And yet, something tells me, even after you found out I served you human flesh, you kept eating, didn’t you?”

Groshlar and Grovmar flicked their eyes at Krumvell, who looked down at the floor shamefully. Ogrell chuckled.

“Thought so.”

“It’s not…it’s not the same thing,” he whimpered. “I didn’t—I didn’t outright _kill_ someone. I wasn’t…you tricked us. That wasn’t my fault! You fed that person to us!”

“And you still kept eating.”

“Because I was hungry, okay?! I wasn’t—I wasn’t thinking about _who_ I ate; I was thinking about _what_ I ate!”

“So you say this…yet all us humanoid races have no problem breeding and raising cows, or pigs, or sheep, or goats, or fish for the sole purpose of slaughtering them for food.”

“That’s not the same thing!”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it’s not!”

“Yes, it is.”

“NO, IT’S NOT!”

Ogrell blinked. “Yes. It is.”

Krumvell stammered and gritted his teeth. “ _Fuck you_. No—no, it’s not…it’s not. When a snake sees a mouse, or a dragon sees a cow, or a weasel sees a rabbit and it’s hungry, it eats it! Because they’re carnivores! Because they were _born_ to eat flesh; that’s what they do! They look at prey and their instinct says, ‘hey look, it’s food. I can fill my stomach now.’ That’s it! A dragon doesn’t stalk after a cow, capture it, and then spend its free time dismembering the cow and watching as the beast constantly bellows and moos hoping that it’ll be saved! A snake does not snap a mouse’s spine and then force the paralyzed mouse to watch as it slowly devours its family right in front of its eyes while the mouse is helpless to do anything! And a weasel doesn’t run around raping rabbits and-and biting off their ears so it can keep them as some form of a sick trophy!”

Krumvell didn’t even realize that tears were rolling down his face, or that he was clenching his fists so hard that his nails were almost puncturing his skin. 

“So don’t you sit there and fucking tell me that what you’re doing is ‘normal’ or that you’re just doing what a predator does! BECAUSE YOU AREN’T!”

Ogrell just blinked and shrugged casually. “It’s amazing how easily people try to justify discrediting logic. All it requires for me to be ‘normal’ is to lose the capability of being sentient. And I’m sure if I was just some mindless retard who didn’t know any better, none of you would be looking at me like a monster.”

Ogrell scratched his chin. “So. By that logic. If I…strip away all your food and starve you for several days, you’ll enter a primal state. You’ll lose sentience. You’ll lose your mind and become feral. And since you are an omnivore, by that logic, you’re gonna eat the first thing you see.”

Ogrell pointed at the Grollear brothers. “Them two. Because, by that point, they won’t be your friends. They’ll just be meat. And you’ll attack and tear their bodies apart. And it won’t be because you hate them, or because you’re full of malice. You’re just hungry. And you wanna fill your belly.”

Krumvell scoffed as he walked over to the bars. “You wanna know what the four of us did a few days ago?”

“Enlighten me.”

“We took a contract where some human wanted to see goblins eat shit. And I’m not speaking colorful words; he had buckets filled with actual fecal matter from his farm animals. Now, lucky for us, he accidentally swapped the buckets of shit with melted chocolate. But my point still stands. The four of us were so desperate for money, and so hungry, that we were on the verge of eating animal excrement.”

Krumvell smirked as he stared at the ogre. “But please, keep sitting there thinking that I’ll turn on my friends.”

After listening to Krumvell’s words, Ogrell snorted at the goblin and shifted over on the floor so he was sitting in front of the Grollear brothers instead. Grovmar was sitting in the corner, while Groshlar still had his arms folded with his back turned. Ogrell snapped his fingers to get their attention.

“Hey. Big guy.”

“I have a name, shit-stain,” Groshlar snarled.

“You’re prey. Your names are irrelevant.”

Groshlar scoffed and turned around to look at Ogrell anyway. “Fuck you want?”

The ogre grinned. “It’s gonna be fun, watching you and that green goblin over there rip each other apart. Obviously your brother here is the weakest of you three; he’ll die next. I know none of you _say_ you’re cannibals, but I’m sure you’ll beg to differ once you sample the fat yellow one’s flesh.”

“And just what makes you think I’d kill my own brother?”

“Because out of the four of you, you’re the most animalistic. You eat when you want. You piss and shit when you need to. You pass gas and belch without excusing yourself, and you don’t care who sees or hears. And you fuck all the time. You live off basic animal principles…kind of admire that really.”

Ogrell licked his lips and chuckled. “But see, unlike your friends? I can _smell_ that darkness in you, goblin. I’ve run into your kind all the time. People like _you_ crack very easily. When people like you are put in jails or dungeons? You crack instantly. You live life the way people _want_ you to live it. You play by the rules. But once those rules are gone, everyone will see that you’re nothing more than a sociopath. You don’t care about your brother; you don’t care about your friends. That’s why you’re so angry all the time. That’s why you can’t stop fucking. Because the more you fuck, the easier it is to quell that hatred you have for this world. But what happens when you can’t fuck anymore? Hmm?”

Groshlar flicked his eyes down at the floor, unable to say anything.

“Ohhhhh, that’s right! You’re gonna devolve, just like this hungry goblin over here! You’ll turn into a wild animal. Only instead of feasting on everything, you’ll go around raping everyone. Hmm…I’d like that. A snarling, living goblin consumed by so much anger that he can’t stop raping and killing those around him. Heh. Tell you what: if you’re the last one standing, I’ll let you go! I wanna see what’ll happen once I’ve broken you and turned you into this sexually depraved faggot who would sodomize a corpse if he was desperate enough.”

Groshlar took a long breath and closed his eyes, nodding slowly. “You say I’m a sociopath?”

“Yeah.”

“You say I don’t love my brother?”

“Nah.”

“And you say I’m gonna turn on my closest companions?”

“Definitely.”

“Mm. What’s two plus two?”

Ogrell frowned. “What?”

“You’re a smart ogre. What’s two plus two?”

Ogrell stammered. “Four? Who gives a shit? What does that matter?”

“Hmm. So you’re saying that explaining something to you that you already know is fucking pointless and a waste of time?”

“Yes!”

“So why the fuck should I stand here and tell you something I already know about my brother and my friends?”

Groshlar snorted. “I know what I am. My brother, Grovmar, knows what I am, and what I mean to him. Bunng and Krumvell know what I am, and what I mean to them. And they all know what I’m _not_.”

Groshlar didn’t say another word. He just blinked and backed away from the bars, and sat down on the floor next to Grovmar, arms folded again. Ogrell just stammered again and stared at the goblins, two of whom looked determined to get out of the cell, no matter what. Seeing no point in speaking to the goblins any further, Ogrell stood up and walked away, leaving the trio by themselves once again. Krumvell sat back down in the other corner of the cell, ignoring the faint sounds of his stomach grumbling. He absent-mindedly opened up one of the rucksacks and started munching on one of the apples, while Groshlar flicked his eyes over at Grovmar, who was breathing quietly with tears running down his face.

“I’m sorry,” Grovmar whispered. “I’m sorry about all of this. …I just wanted us—”

Grovmar shouted when Groshlar punched him in the jaw, almost knocking out a tooth. The younger goblin swore and rubbed the side of his face before scowling at Groshlar.

“Shut the fuck up. You didn’t lock us in here, you’re not kidnapping and eating people, and you didn’t drag us by chains to come along with you.”

Groshlar looked away from his brother and through the barred cell again. He huffed.

“We’ll be fine…Bunng will come back, and we’ll be fine.”

Groshlar didn’t say anything more, mostly because he was beginning to doubt the goblin, and seriously wondered if he’d ever return.

_________________________________

How long had he been roaming the caves? Twenty minutes? Thirty? Bunng came across the same series of stalagmites multiple times now. He kept seeing the same withered bat corpse lying near a boulder with one of the wings torn off. Surely Ogrell came back and noticed that Bunng was missing. The yellow beast took a few deep breaths before he set down the torch and fell to his knees, retching and grabbing his head. He could still taste the rancid wyvern bait in the back of his throat, and the potion that Ogrell gave him was still traveling through his digestive system. Bunng took a few deep breaths and waited until his vision cleared before he stood up again and started wandering through the tunnels. Bunng spotted a small incline nearby that led into a vast open section of the cavern and walked down the rocky path. It wasn’t until he walked for a few more yards that he detected a pungent odor in the air. He didn’t get faint hints of Ogrell’s stench anywhere, so he approached it. Bunng turned left and followed the walls, panting and covering his nose as the smell amplified.

“Ogrell?!”

Bunng paused when he saw something moving around slightly near the wall. It wasn’t until Bunng stepped up to the wall that he spotted a naked man restricted against the rocky structure. His arms and individual fingers had all been nailed into the wall, and his bloodied, filthy feet were bound together with metal chains.

“Not…not Ogrell. Not Ogrell…go ‘way. GO ‘WAY!”

The goblin looked up at the man’s face and was disturbed when he saw that his lips, nose, and eyelids had all been cut off. His yellow teeth were permanently showing, and his eyeballs looked massive with no lids covering them.

“SHH! I’m not here to hurt you—”

“I’LL EAT! I’LL EAT, OGRELL! PLEASE!”

The man’s eyes started watering, and he whimpered as tears ran down his face.

“I’ll eat what you want, Ogrell…just let me leave…”

“I’m not Ogrell!” Bunng shouted.

The man salivated and moved his eyeballs, looking down at Bunng. “No…no. Goblin? What…what goblin do here?”

“Same as you. Ogrell kidnapped me and my friends; I escaped.”

“No ‘scape…no ever ‘scape…locked door…wyverns—”

“I’ll deal with that later. Listen, I had a weapon; it was a sharpened bone. Did-did you see where Ogrell took it?”

The man slurped and clacked his teeth a few times. “Treasure. Og-Ogrell…Ogrell take—he-he takes treasure…keepsakes…collar…he took my collar…”

Whimpering, the man’s eyes watered as he moved them around, unable to blink. “Left…go-go left…go down, down path on right, then-then right turn. Ogrell keep prizes there…”

Bunng stared at the man’s deformed body and swallowed hard before he asked another question. “How…how long have you been here?”

“Ogrell…Og…OGRELL! Ogrell, I’ll-I’ll listen! I’ll eat! I’LL EAT! OGRELL!”

The man started shouting and roaring hysterically, desperately trying to move his arms and legs as he thrashed his head about. Bunng repeatedly shushed the man, hoping he’d calm down. But when Bunng turned around and heard faint footsteps in the distance, he was forced to dip his torch into a nearby puddle to extinguish it. Then he panted as he climbed over a stalagmite and hid behind it, holding his breath as he peeked around the corner of it. After another twenty seconds of screaming, the man’s voice went quiet, and Bunng could see the shadow of a bloated figure standing in front of him.

“This again, Father? I told you, if you’re gonna waste all of your time screaming and hollering, you’re gonna lose your tongue next,” Ogrell snarled.

“NO! No, no…please—no more…gimme food. You want me…you want me to eat more human flesh? I’ll-I’ll do it…I’ll do it! I’ll eat what you want! Just stop this…” he pleaded.

Ogrell stared at the man and smiled. “I see. You’re bored. You’ve finally hit that point. It isn’t enough that I’ve fed you flesh of your own kind. It isn’t enough that I cut off pieces of you. You’re just…you just _won’t_ listen to me now.”

“I want to go home…I’ve done what you asked…let me go home…”

The ogre removed a knife from his right pocket and smirked. He stared at the man for a brief moment. And then he reached up and stuck the weapon into the man’s chest cavity. The man squealed, shuddering and whimpering as blood began to run down his body. Then Ogrell slowly moved the blade in a vertical motion, dragging it down the man’s flesh, until he reached his groin. He sliced all the way through his penis, and then grunted as he moved the knife away, watching as his intestines gradually spilled out. Fat and blood oozed from the human’s chest cavity, forming a thick pool of fluids on the floor, while his intestines dangled from his open wound, looking like a horrible amalgamation of gooey, tangled-up reddish blobs of flesh. Ogrell licked the knife clean before he turned around and sighed, stomping his way through the cavern. Bunng, shivering and panting, was thankful that Ogrell took a right turn instead of a left one. After the ogre disappeared from his sights, Bunng emerged from his hiding spot and started to jog, trying his best to avoid any puddles. When he came across another torch hanging from the walls, he climbed up a boulder and took it off.

With his path illuminated once more, Bunng listened to the mutilated man’s advice and took a path to his left, then followed a tunnel that led down an incline. Once he reached the bottom of it, he turned right again and entered another chamber that was seemingly large enough for a giant or dragon to sleep in. Bunng looked around the vast area, unable to see the very top of the cave because of how high it was. He heard faint squeaks from above and assumed that bats were quietly sleeping and flying around the cave of the cavern. Bunng wiped his nose as he looked around the cave, examining all of the oversized boulders, the stalagmites, and what appeared to be some kind of skeletal remains of certain creatures. The goblin walked around looking for any kind of valuable weapon, all the way until he came across a bizarrely-shaped rock that was formed in a half circle, almost like a table. Bunng walked over to the half-circle and was disturbed when he saw at one end of the half-circle, a green shield with dried-up blood staining part of it. The shield had a crest on it depicting two platinum lances crossed together to form an X, with an image of a dragon’s head in the center of it.

Bunng stared at the shield for a moment before he walked around the half-circle and came across a wagon’s wheel, which looked chipped and broken. The next item he saw was a clerical collar, presumably the same one the man nailed to the wall wore. After that, Bunng spotted what appeared to be a chef’s hat, although it was so filthy now that Bunng could barely even tell that it was still white. The goblin wiped his nose before he saw two dolls sitting next to the hat, both of which looked far too small for an adult to be playing with. The goblin froze for a moment, his eyes watering as he looked at all of the trinkets splayed out on the rocky structure. He exhaled and blinked his tears away before he looked beside the dolls and spotted his sharpened bone. Bunng quickly grabbed the bone and stuffed it down the back of his trousers. He immediately turned around and backtracked his way to where he originally found the priest’s corpse. Rubbing his nose, Bunng sniffed the air several times, hoping he’d be able to detect the ogre’s potent stench. He went down the same left path as before, but didn’t go down the incline. The further he walked, the more the odor of Ogrell’s unwashed body and soiled trousers increased. Bunng took out his bone and prepared himself.

“Wait.”

Bunng looked left. And then yelped and backed away. He was walking so fast that he hadn’t even noticed that he was standing right next to a cell. The goblin took a few breaths as he walked towards the cell and squinted, glaring inside.

“Wait…stop.”

Bunng held the torch forward and could make out a human being standing inside of the cell. His body wasn’t mutilated like the priest nailed to the wall, but he was just as filthy, and he had all the clothes stripped from him.

“He went this way, yeah?” Bunng asked.

The human nodded and grasped the bars. “He said…he said I should choose…”

Bunng looked inside the cell again and grimaced when he saw two human corpses inside, both of which looked like they had been chopped to pieces. In the corner at the other end of the cell were two black-scaled stilios who didn’t have a scratch on either of them. Both of them were sitting in the corner with their backs turned, snarling quietly as they chewed on something.

“He said…he told me, stilio flesh is toxic to humans…so he said, ‘starve or choose.’”

Bunng stared at the man, watching as he slowly fell down to his knees, looking like he didn’t have a shred of hope left inside of him. He also noticed that the human wasn’t skinny to the point where his bones were showing. The goblin backed away from the cell, clearly able to comprehend what happened to the man. He wandered through the tunnels for a little while longer, until he came across another cell that happened to be full of murids. But unlike the previous cell, all five murids were dead, their bodies so thin that Bunng could see the bones beneath their fur and flesh. Bunng whimpered and rushed past the cell, fully realizing that he and the other goblins weren’t the only ones in peril. He jogged past another cell and shouted when the occupant inside threw himself at the bars, snarling and drooling like a wild animal.

“FOOD! MORE FOOD!”

Bunng looked at the prisoner and could see that he was a green-skinned goblin who looked the same age as Krumvell. The snarling, bald beast stuck his right arm through the bars, licking his lips and swiping at the air.

“C’mere, c’mere—get in here! Food—more! MORE FOOD FOR ME!”

The green goblin let out an eerie laugh as he backed away and licked his lips again. “I’ll eat. I’ll eat! Lemme out; I’ll eat more! More flesh…more…I WANT MORE!”

Bunng couldn’t stare at the beast any longer. He didn’t even try to imagine what Ogrell did to him to make his mind snap. Gradually getting angrier, Bunng stomped forward and gripped his sharpened bone more tightly, hoping he’d run into Ogrell so he could impale him through his sadistic heart. As Bunng moved forward, he saw another torch glowing in the distance, and finally came across the blubbery beast that was Ogrell. He gasped and crouched down near a stalagmite, hiding his torch on the floor near a boulder and praying the light didn’t cast a shadow. When he peeked around the stalagmite, he saw Ogrell talking to another human locked in a cell with a smirk on his face.

“…is of no concern anymore. You know she’s dead,” Ogrell stated.

“…I don’t care…just…my child…”

“Your wife’s stomach wasn’t big enough to carry that child.” The ogre paused for a moment so he could pat his jiggly belly. “Mine was though!”

 _This sick cocksucker_ , Ogrell thought.

The human inside the cell didn’t even seem to care. He just exhaled as he sat down slowly, as if he didn’t see the point in going on any longer.

“Why? Just tell me…tell me why.”

Ogrell blinked. “Isn’t it obvious?”

Neither of them said anything further. Ogrell turned and continued down the tunnel, meandering down the rocky floor without a care in the world. Bunng followed after him; he was close enough to a point where he could see the keys jangling from the ogre’s trousers. Bunng lightly moved closer to the obese beast, ready to attack if necessary, when the ogre reached behind and grabbed the keys. Bunng swore softly when Ogrell sniffed the air twice and turned around. Had Bunng not thrown himself behind a series of small stalagmites, the ogre would’ve spotted him. Ogrell took a deep breath and shook his head.

“I know you’ve been following me, goblin.”

Bunng’s eyes widened.

“What? You think I haven’t noticed? Thing about you goblins? You all have _very_ distinct odors. Can smell you vile creatures from miles off. Hehe, I just wanted you to see my craft!”

Ogrell took a few steps in Bunng’s direction and chuckled. “Do you like it? Ooh, did you find all of my souvenirs yet? Which one do you like best? I’m quite fond of that chef’s hat…rather ironic, given what happened to that renowned cook.”

Bunng didn’t answer, prompting Ogrell to huff with annoyance.

“You come out now, maybe I won’t hack off your limbs one at a time. Perhaps I’ll just slice your throat, force your friends to drink the blood that drips out. …Actually…hmm. I wonder if you goblins know what sympathy is. Let’s test it out!”

When Bunng peeked around the corner of the stalagmite again, he saw Ogrell turned around and facing another cell, inserting one of the keys into the keyhole so he could unlock the cell door. For a moment, the goblin heard a few murmurs and what sounded like a group of people just waking up. But then someone yelped and began to fight back against the ogre, and Bunng could see that Ogrell was holding onto a child no older than eight years old. After dragging the child out of the cell, Ogrell slammed the door shut and locked it again.

“What are you doing?!”

“WAIT! WAIT—SHE DIDN’T DO ANYTHING!”

“GIVE HER BACK!”

The occupants in the cell continued to scream and beg for Ogrell to release the child. The eight-year-old in tattered rags shouted and whimpered, gritting her teeth as she scratched at Ogrell’s thick arm and tried to bite him. The ogre shouted and let go, but before the girl could run away, Ogrell punched her in the jaw, knocking her down to the floor. The huffing ogre turned around and tried to find Bunng, who was still hiding.

“The thing about you children? Heh…you’re so fragile.”

Ogrell waited for the girl to stand back up, and punched her in the nose, breaking it.

“Your skin is so soft.”

He punched her again, this time breaking her jaw. She was on the floor now, coughing up blood and whimpering as she tried to crawl away.

“Your flesh is tender…”

Ogrell grabbed the girl and slammed her against the wall four times head first, listening to some of the rocks crumbling onto the floor as a blotch of blood appeared on the wall. The girl was moaning, hardly able to move now, while the children witnessing the event were screaming hysterically or broke down crying. Bunng sobbed as he shut his eyes and covered his ears, incapable of hearing all the nightmarish din.

“And your organs are just so damn _juicy_.”

From that point forward, Ogrell continued to beat the young girl, punching her in the face and head, listening as more bones in her body broke or cracked. He threw her into the wall several times, even going as far as slamming her head into the metal bars of the cell the kids were locked inside. He knew she was dead already, but he couldn’t help but take delight in repeatedly mutilating the child’s body. It wasn’t until most of her teeth had been knocked out, her neck had snapped, and the face was pulverized to the point of being unrecognizable, that he stopped and threw the body to the floor. Bunng finally opened his tear-filled eyes, gritting his teeth as he clutched onto the sharpened bone and huffed.

“Hey, kids? You wanna see something fun? Hehe, I’m gonna show you how to extract an eyeball! It’s easy!”

Ogrell bent down and exhaled as he flipped the girl’s corpse over, exposing her face. Then he opened up one of her eyes and licked his teeth, not caring that the children in the cell were still sobbing or whimpering.

“Okay, so you gotta just take two fingers and jam ‘em in the socket, like so…”

Ogrell grunted as he shoved two meaty fingers into the cadaver’s eye socket and started to push the eyeball outwards. Bunng silently, but quickly, crept over to Ogrell as he had his back turned.

“Pop it out like…MMF! There we go. Just like that!”

The ogre looked up at the cell, still holding the eyeball. “Now once it’s out, you gotta cut off the optic nerve. Then you—”

He noticed the torch’s flame just when Bunng arrived. By the time Ogrell turned around and saw him, Bunng was already thrusting his sharpened bone forward. The goblin shouted as he jammed the bone into Ogrell’s left eye, destroying it. Ogrell shrieked and immediately lost half his vision; he stood up, swearing incoherently as he grabbed the bone and tried to wrench it out. Bunng held on, whimpering and grunting as he tried to remove it so he could impale Ogrell in the face again. 

“DIE! JUST…FUCKING…”

Bunng snarled as he twisted the bone, and heard a squelching crunch.

“ _DIE_!”

Ogrell bellowed as he grabbed Bunng’s smaller body and hurled him against the wall. The goblin grunted as he collapsed to the floor, and immediately huffed and whimpered as he tried looking for something else to wound him with. Unfortunately, Ogrell didn’t have the crossbow with him; Bunng had no other proper weapon. He picked up the torch Ogrell set on the ground and threw it, setting Ogrell’s wool shirt on fire. The ogre panicked and shrieked again, thrashing about as he tried to put out the flame. He tripped over the girl’s body, landing on his stomach. Bunng swiftly ran to Ogrell and snatched the keys off his pants, and then sprinted in the other direction. He could’ve freed the children, but he had no idea which key worked with their cell, and he didn’t want to waste time finding out when Ogrell was so close. So he started running back to where Groshlar, Grovmar, and Krumvell were being held, while Ogrell roared again and got back up, taking off his shirt before the fire spread to his pants or seriously burned his body. Ogrell grunted and winced as he started to jog down the same path Bunng took, letting his nose guide him. He reached up and tried to pry the bone from his eye again, but moving it even slightly put the ogre in more pain.

“Fine…fine. Hehe…this just makes it more fun anyways…”


	8. Don’t Step Outside

Still panting and huffing, Bunng sprinted throughout the cave, stopping occasionally so he could cough or catch his breath. The wyvern bait was still in his system, sending waves of nausea throughout his body and making the goblin retch a few times. He leaned against the wall and looked up at the ceiling, glaring at the stalactites and some of the water and slime dripping from the pieces of rock. Bunng turned to his right and jogged down a very narrow path he could hardly fit through, only to come across a tiny crevice in the wall he’d have to crawl into just to proceed. Bunng immediately turned around, knowing he never came across said crevice and took the wrong path. So he chose a different path instead, and yelped once he found a dismembered corpse lying on the floor with teeth marks all over the skin and chunks of flesh missing. Bunng didn’t remember that either; he turned back around into the area he was originally running around in and spun around in a circle.

“Not…not that…this way?” Bunng asked himself.

Bunng aimlessly pointed to another dark corridor in the cavern and traveled down it. He only got a few steps before he turned around and vomited on the floor again, wishing he could erase the grotesque image of what he just saw. Coughing and spitting, the goblin’s arms shook as he held one of the torches he found, still hoping that Ogrell might eventually die of blood loss or shock by the time he found his friends again. With no other way to go, Bunng moved down the last pathway that had no seemingly odd objects blocking it, and thankfully no dead ends. He broke out into a jog again when he thought he heard something growling behind him. As he ran, he came upon another wide-open chasm, and was glad when he saw the disemboweled priest’s body nailed to the wall again. His memory gradually began to come back, and Bunng resumed jogging through the darkness. As Bunng glanced at the wall and saw the series of torches lined against the rock, Bunng waited until he reached two different paths in the cave, both of which were seemingly pitch black. The goblin glanced at the floor, trying to figure out if he could find any blotches of vomit he left when Ogrell was hauling him to get medical attention.

“Fuck…GROV—”

Bunng immediately shut his mouth. Screaming any of the goblins’ names would only expose himself. He turned around just to make sure that Ogrell wasn’t nearby, and resumed jogging through the tunnels, choosing the one on his left instead of the right. The goblin slowed down as he breathed heavily and skimmed the torch around the floor, smiling slightly once he found one of the blotches of vomit resting on the floor.

“There…c’mon, I’m almost there,” he said, sweating and noticing he was out of breath.

Bunng heaved a few times and wiped his face off as he resumed jogging through the tunnels, still hoping that Ogrell wouldn’t be able to catch up to him.

_____________________________

Groshlar huffed as he picked up a large rock from the floor. Grovmar paced back and forth, fidgeting constantly and worrying more than he should. Krumvell was sitting in the corner and muttering to himself, smiling and chuckling after saying a couple of phrases. Groshlar looked at the bearded goblin and blinked.

“Fuck you goin’ on about?”

“That…that apple crisp at the bakery—we never ate that before, yeah? Or…or maybe the cherry cobbler. Yeah…yeah, that’d be nice…”

“Krum!”

Krumvell stopped talking to himself and looked up at Groshlar. “Oh. Just thinking about all the stuff we’re gonna eat when we get outta here.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s better than sitting here contemplating whether or not I’m gonna go crazy and eat you both. …And frankly, it’s giving me a reason to get out of this place.”

“Tch! Whatever. Soon as I see that fat fuck, I’m gonna chuck this rock at his skull. Maybe I’ll hit him so hard that—”

Groshlar heard something huffing and tripping as they approached the cell. Groshlar instinctively tossed the rock between the bars, hitting Bunng in the forehead so hard that he shouted and fell to the floor. Krumvell looked at Bunng’s body and smirked.

“Ya got him!”

Bunng groaned as he got to his hands and knees, and then stood up in front of the cell rubbing his forehead.

“What the fuck, Grosh?! That almost hit my eye!”

“I’m sorry! I thought you was Ogrell!”

“You mistook me for a morbidly obese ogre who’s over three feet taller than me?!”

Groshlar paused and opened his mouth. Bunng held up his hand and cut him off.

“Don’t answer that; I know what you’re gonna say.”

Grovmar and Krumvell smiled as they walked over to the door, while Bunng grunted as he lifted the keys and started to insert one of them into the keyhole.

“I knew you’d be back in time!” Krumvell said merrily.

“Where’s Ogrell? Is he still alive?” Grovmar asked.

Bunng huffed. “Unfortunately. I kinda pissed him off when I shoved that bone in his eye.”

“Oh shit. Is he following you?”

“Doesn’t matter. He knows where I’m going.”

“Then unlock the damn door!” Groshlar demanded.

Bunng removed the key from the keyhole and looked at the various other keys secured onto the metal hoop.

“Um…yeah…this might take a while.”

The goblins inside the cell groaned and looked outside repeatedly, getting more and more nervous as Bunng kept trying each key for the door. Several minutes and a dozen keys later, the cell door was still locked, much to the group’s dismay.

“FUCK! C’mon, goddamn it!” Bunng shouted with frustration.

“You think he left our cell key in one of his pockets?” Krumvell suggested.

“No! I saw him unlocking one of the cells with these keys; this has to work!”

“Um…Bunng, speed up,” Grovmar suggested.

“Why?”

“Because I can see a torch flickering in the distance. And it looks like it’s moving towards us.”

Bunng didn’t look behind him. He kept fidgeting with the keys, huffing as he continuously shoved different keys into the keyhole and turned them all. After eighteen different keys, he finally was able to turn one and pry the door open. The Grollear brothers and Krumvell rushed out and started to run out into the caves.

“Which way? Which way?!”

“ _Away_ from where I saw the torch, Grosh!” Grovmar shouted.

“I think the main entrance is around the corner. C’mon, we shoud—”

Bunng was just starting to walk when he screamed and fell down, dropping the keys. When the other three goblins looked at Bunng’s right leg, they could see that he had an arrow sticking out of his calf. The yellow goblin swore twice and gritted his teeth as he tried to stand up. Meanwhile, everyone could see that Ogrell had finally found them. The shirtless ogre was breathing heavily, his face covered in sweat and blood. He held a crossbow in both hands and had a quiver on his back again. Ogrell lowered his crossbow and started to drag his large feet against the floor, wheezing and drooling uncontrollably.

“Go on,” he huffed. “Run! That…the fat one’s gonna slow ya down! And there ain’t no way you can get past the main door!”

“FUCK YOU!” Groshlar screamed.

As Bunng tried to stand up, Groshlar picked up the rock he threw at Bunng and chucked it at Ogrell this time. It bounced off his blubbery belly without slowing the beast down at all.

“Krum, get a torch! Grosh—URGH! Help me carry Bunng!” Grovmar shouted.

Krum nodded and jumped up to grab one of the torches off the wall. Meanwhile, Grovmar panted as he looked inside the cell and saw all their belongings still sitting on the floor. He sprinted inside and picked up the canister of wyvern bait and ran back outside. As Groshlar began to pick up Bunng, Grovmar ran past them and down the same tunnel Ogrell was in. He waited until he was close to the ogre, while Ogrell started to reload the crossbow and tossed down his torch. Before he could finish, Grovmar tore the cap off the bait and shouted as he hurled all the contents inside at the ogre’s body and face. Ogrell howled in pain as the bait got into his good eye and inside his nostrils, burning them as if someone just squirted acidic juices into his eyes. Grovmar turned back around and returned to Groshlar and Bunng. He stood next to Bunng’s right and grunted as he lifted him up, forcing the yellow goblin to drape his right arm around the back of his neck.

“Grosh…Grov—”

“Shut up. We’re getting out of here now. Just shut your mouth!” Grovmar barked.

While Groshlar and Grovmar carried the wounded goblin, Krumvell kept running forward, frantically trying to figure out which way to go. He spotted three different paths, one of which led down into pure darkness, while the other two went up an incline.

“Which one?!”

“JUST PICK ONE, KRUM!” Bunng shouted.

Krumvell swore as he walked ahead of the group for a few yards, checking to see which tunnel was safer. He went down the path on his left first, only to come running back a minute later exhaling.

“Nothing—just a dead end.”

The goblins all deduced that the third tunnel was the one they needed to head down, so all of them started to jog or hurriedly walk through the shadowy, gloomy tunnel, all while Ogrell kept chasing after them slowly. Krumvell shouted when an object nearly took off his right ear, thunking into the wall seconds later. When the group reached the object, they all could see that an arrow Ogrell fired just barely missed Krumvell’s head. All of them would’ve been more worried, if they hadn’t turned to their left and saw a tunnel leading up to a door that had daylight shining through it. All of them figured out which door it was, and Krumvell sprinted up the incline carrying the keys, while Bunng, Groshlar, and Grovmar all stayed behind so they could slowly move up the incline.

“I’m slowing you two down…just—”

“Shut up, Bunng. Just shut your mouth! If anyone’s gonna fuckin’ kill your ass, it’s gonna be me!” Groshlar shouted.

Bunng couldn’t help but chuckle at Groshlar’s words; it was evident that the whole ordeal hadn’t changed his brash attitude one bit. The Grollear brothers still struggled as they carried the heavy goblin up the incline, with both of them stopping on occasion to catch their breath. As they started to get towards the top, another arrow flew past their heads, almost hitting Krumvell once more.

“The fat one…he’s-he’s gonna get you all killed!” Ogrell bellowed.

The ogre licked his lips and chuckled softly as he started to climb up the slope, all while he reloaded his crossbow again, preparing to shoot. While all of that was happening, Krumvell was frantically switching from key to key, inserting all of them into the lock to try and figure out which one worked. Groshlar could see Ogrell taking aim again down below, so he picked up a hefty rock from the ground and grunted as he tossed it at the ogre, missing his head but hitting him in his hands. Ogrell exclaimed and fired, but the arrow hit the wall and snapped in half. Groshlar assisted Grovmar in dragging Bunng up the rocky hill again, with Krumvell nearly finished with testing all of the keys. Ogrell huffed deeply and, using a small amount of energy he could muster, jogged up the hill to try and catch the group in time. Groshlar, Grovmar, and Bunng all got to the top, just as Krumvell opened the door and stepped outside.

“GOT IT!”

The moment Krumvell got outside, Ogrell reached the other three. He punched Groshlar in the back of the head, causing his body to tumble outside. Bunng screamed and gagged when Ogrell wrapped his thick left arm around his throat and lifted him off the floor. Grovmar noticed that Bunng was snatched from him, but grunted when Ogrell smacked him across the face with his crossbow, knocking him outside too. The Grollear brothers rolled down a grassy hill for a moment before they both stood up alongside Krumvell. All the goblins looked at Ogrell, tempted to charge at the beast. But then Ogrell held up his crossbow and pointed it at the three of them.

“ _Don’t_ ,” he snarled.

Grovmar looked at the wounded ogre’s crossbow and smirked. “You really think you can fire that with one hand?”

“You wanna find out?”

Grovmar shut his mouth, while Groshlar scoffed and looked at Ogrell’s maimed eye. “Can you even _see_ us? Seems like something’s jammed in your eye socket.”

Ogrell huffed before he looked at the struggling Bunng and tightened his grip. “It doesn’t take much to snap someone’s neck. Especially a goblin’s.”

Krumvell huffed. “Look…just let-let us go. We won’t tell anyone about what you did; just drop Bunng—”

Ogrell heard wings flapping and looked up into the sky. He chuckled when he spotted a wyvern flapping its huge wings near the mountain.

“Nah…nah. You know what’s gonna happen? We’re gonna stay right here…uh-huh. You forget already? I smothered you all in wyvern bait!”

The goblins all looked up in the skies and could see that a second wyvern had joined the first and was circling the skies and gradually descending. However, none of the goblins panicked, and they all looked back at Ogrell.

“Feel free to run! You…you won’t get far. None of you will. Those wyverns will tear all your limbs off and suck the flesh right from the torn orifices. Or…or maybe they’ll take turns breaking all your bones just to see how long you survive before the shock kills you! After I see your corpses spread out across this field…I’m gonna bring your friend back inside! I’m gonna keep him alive as long as fucking possible, cut off just _one_ part of his body each and every day…ear here, toe there, you know how it goes.”

“Just shut up and fucking kill us already,” Groshlar snarled.

Ogrell looked up at the wyverns again. They were descending, but still taking much longer than Ogrell wanted. He pointed his crossbow at Grovmar and huffed.

“They’re taking too long…maybe if I draw out some blood—”

“You are _not_ hurting my brother.”

“Please,” Krumvell said, whimpering as his eyes filled with tears. “Let us leave! There’s no point to any of this! You-you said yourself—we’re dead anyway!”

“No. See, your chubby friend here ruined my eye. It’s only fair that I _make_ him use his eyes in order to witness his friends dying. And once you’re all dead, I’ll remove his with my bare fingers!”

Ogrell started to press his finger on the trigger, causing Grovmar to raise his hands.

“Fuck—wait! WAIT!”

“YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO THIS!” Krumvell wailed.

“But I want to,” Ogrell stated.

He said it so flippantly. There was no talking sense into him. They all knew it now. Even with the various shenanigans they had been through in their lives, even with all the seemingly grotesque or putrid adventures they went through in the past week, nothing seemed to disgust them more than the ogre standing right in front of them all. None of them bothered saying anything; it wouldn’t matter. After a brief pause, Ogrell fired. Groshlar immediately shoved his brother to the ground, and screamed when the arrow went through him and knocked him down. 

“GROSHLAR!” Grovmar shouted.

The wyverns both landed on the ground, standing near Ogrell instead of the goblins. Bunng leaned his head forward, and then slammed it backwards into Ogrell’s face. He shouted and dropped Bunng, and the yellow goblin limped away, knowing what was about to happen. Frustrated, Ogrell reached for another bow from his quiver. And then screamed when one of the two wyverns bit down on his arm. The goblins all backed away from the obese beast, watching as a brown-scaled wyvern latched onto his arm, drawing blood. Then it bit down with a meaty crunch and snapped the arm right off. Ogrell could do nothing but shriek as he dropped his crossbow and looked down at his severed limb, the wound squirting blood all over the ground. He tried to run away from the wyverns, panting and dragging his tired, heavy feet against the grass. But the second wyvern, a blue-and-white-scaled beast, stomped towards the ogre and roared, opening its drooling maw. All the goblins watched as it latched down onto his upper body, biting down against his corpulent stomach and piercing the flesh with its teeth. It lifted Ogrell right off the ground, biting down harder and flailing its head around.

The legs were still moving in some vain attempt to escape, but everyone knew that Ogrell was done for. So all of them watched with smug satisfaction as the blue wyvern chomped down on Ogrell’s upper body, gradually drawing more blood and yellowish fat from his stomach. The brown wyvern, having swallowed the arm, stomped towards Ogrell’s thrashing legs and bit down on them. From that point forward, both winged beasts kept tugging on the ogre’s corpse, jerking their heads back and forth as they tried to devour the entire ogre all for themselves. The more they tugged, the harder they bit down, drawing more blood that dripped onto the ground. Eventually, both of them bit down so hard that their teeth dug into the bones. And then, simultaneously, they walked backwards, stretching out the ogre’s body until the stomach started to tear before their very eyes. There was a squelching, meaty snap, along with the sound of bones crunching, as Ogrell’s body was torn in half. The blue and white wyvern noisily chewed on the upper half of the body, while the brown beast crunched on the legs and waist before swallowing with a thick gulp. It immediately turned and looked at the goblins, walking towards them and lowering its head. When it was close enough, the beast snorted in the goblins’ faces before sniffing them several times. Krumvell turned and looked at Bunng, swallowing.

“It…it’s not sentient, right?” Krumvell whispered.

The brown wyvern didn’t speak. But it did grin widely before snorting in Krumvell’s face. Then it stood straight up, turned around, and kicked a pile of dirt at the goblins before emitting a series of growling grunts that almost sounded like laughter. When the blue wyvern finished its meal, it spread its wings and began to fly away. The brown wyvern did the same, leaving the goblins to themselves as it flapped its wings and took off to the skies. As Krumvell and Bunng began to relax, the whimpering Grovmar got on his knees and rolled Groshlar’s body over, panicking. He moved his fingers near his neck and checked his pulse.

“Is he—”

“No, Krum,” Grovmar said with relief. “He’s alive. Um…uh, I’m not sure if he’s gonna wake up soon though.”

“Maybe you should, um, do the-the mouth thing?” Bunng suggested.

“What mouth thing?”

“Y’know, clear his airway, all that stuff?”

Grovmar looked at Bunng as he made a few gestures with his arms. Then he looked down at Groshlar’s mouth and grimaced, fully aware of what he needed to do. Groaning softly, Grovmar tilted the goblin’s head back, lowered his jaw for him, and lightly pressed two fingers against the bridge of his nose. Then Grovmar pressed his mouth against Groshlar’s and blew a long breath into his mouth. He took his mouth away once he finished and wiped some of the saliva off before he leaned down, prepared to do it again. But just as he was about to, Groshlar’s eyes opened slowly.

“Grosh…you okay, buddy?”

A small smirk appeared on Groshlar’s face. “Told ya…you were gonna kiss me one day.”

Grovmar frowned when he heard Groshlar chuckle softly. And then he punched him against his left cheek, making Groshlar shout out.

“You fucking asshole,” Grovmar snarled.

Groshlar rubbed his face as he sat up, and then grunted and winced when Grovmar wrapped his arms around him and embraced him.

“OW! Watch-watch the arrow!”

Grovmar didn’t care. He just smiled as he hugged his brother, happy that he’d still be able to listen to his smug comments and have to suffer through his disturbed sense of humor. Groshlar hugged Grovmar back as well, still wincing a bit at the arrow lodged inside of his body. Once they finished embracing one another, the Grollear brothers stood up and looked around the field. Groshlar spotted the patch of blood and fat in the grass and scowled.

“Guess those wyverns ate the fat fuck, huh?”

“Rather fitting if you ask me,” Bunng remarked.

Groshlar closed his eyes as he weakly lifted his right arm and rubbed his forehead. “I’m guessing he didn’t reveal where he was hiding his money.”

“Do you seriously think he was gonna pay us to begin with?” Grovmar asked.

“Great. That’s just fuckin’ great. So after all this shit, we’re _still_ in the same position we were in when we started all of this.”

“Not entirely,” Krumvell added. “You and Bunng didn’t have arrows in your bodies before we took Ogrell’s contract.”

“Yes, thank you for reminding me. I forgot,” Groshlar snarled.

Krumvell shut his mouth, while Bunng looked down at the set of keys he had dangling from his pocket and pulled them out.

“Not…not true. There’s more people in those caves. We gotta go back and free them.”

“Why?”

“There’s some kids in there, Grosh!”

“So?”

Krumvell frowned and pushed his index fingers together. “I…I think we should go back too. If there’s more people in there, does-doesn’t it make sense to free them?”

“Not if they’ve gone crazy and plan on killing us the moment we release them!”

Grovmar looked at Groshlar and sniffed. “Y’know, Grosh…I do recall Bunng grabbing a contract we ignored that said a dozen children went missing. And the reward was _platinum_ coins. Maybe Ogrell won’t pay us, but the townspeople might.”

Groshlar’s anger immediately went away. “Really now?”

“‘Sides, we both need to patch up our wounds, Grosh.” Bunng added. “The room Ogrell took me to had all these potions and other healing items inside; there’s bound to be some bandages and some other supplies so we can remove the arrows without bleeding to death.”

Groshlar exhaled and nodded. “All right, all right. We’ll head back inside. Least now we don’t have some murderous ogre chasing after us.”

All the goblins agreed to head back into the caves, with Krumvell and Grovmar helping the limping Groshlar and Bunng walk around.

_________________________________________

Bunng grunted as he set the key inside of the cage door that had the lone human being and two black stilios inside of it. He unlocked the cell and opened up the door, and the three occupants inside looked at the door with confusion.

“C’mon, we’re letting you out. You don’t gotta worry about Ogrell anymore.”

One of the stilios hissed as she walked over to Bunng. “What happened to him?”

“Don’t matter. Fucker’s dead, and thankfully we still got his keys. You’re free now.”

The bipedal reptile hissed again, her yellow eyes almost glowing in the darkness as she nodded. “And here I thought all you goblins were dim-witted twats.”

That was the closest compliment they were gonna get from the stilio, so they didn’t remark on it. The goblins just continued to walk down the tunnel as the human being and male stilio all walked outside as well. All of them moved past the cell filled with the dead murids before they came across the cell with only one goblin inside. Just like before, the goblin sprinted towards the bars and started salivating and noisily slobbering, snapping at the goblins.

“FOOD! YOU CAME BACK! AND YA BROUGHT FRIENDS!”

Bunng exhaled. “I’m not—”

“Yeahyeahyeahyeahyeahyeah—more food! More food for my stomach! C’mon, c’mon, lemme out! OPEN THE DOOR! I LONG TO FEAST ON YOUR FLESH!”

The goblin inside the cell sniffed the air repeatedly, sounding like some kind of feral dog, before he pointed at Groshlar.

“You…you smell gooooood! Yesssssssss…yeah, c’mere! C’mere!”

The goblins all looked down at the caged goblin and grimaced once they saw his penis throbbing and releasing a small amount of pre-ejaculate. The naked goblin stuck his penis between the bars, licking his lips as he thrust forward a few times.

“Go on, go on, suck on it! YOU KNOW YOU WANNA DO IT! Let me tear through your flesh! LET ME FUCK YOU ALL ‘TIL YOUR ASSES ARE RAW!”

Bunng exhaled and shook his head, while Krumvell just looked at the goblin and got teary-eyed.

“We…we can’t free him, can we?”

None of the goblins said anything. All of them merely looked around awkwardly for something to use to get rid of the delirious beast. Groshlar looked down at the crossbow he took from Ogrell, since the ogre wouldn’t need it any longer. He decided to set one arrow into it after he and the other goblins found spare arrows hidden inside the medical cavern where he and Bunng got patched up before finding the cells again. Groshlar exhaled as he looked at the goblin, watching him drool some more as he kept scratching at the bars, waiting to be freed. Then Groshlar lifted the crossbow, wincing and struggling to hold it, still feeling pain around his left arm and near his upper left breast. He fired an arrow at the goblin’s head, watching as he yelped and rolled around on the floor and went limp. Groshlar lowered the crossbow before gesturing to move further down the tunnel.

“There’s two more cells,” Bunng said softly, trying to ignore what just happened. “And yes, everyone inside of them is still sane.”

“Good,” Grovmar commented.

The group of goblins walked over to the next cage that had the seemingly depressed man sitting inside of it, who was lying down on the floor near one of the walls. When Bunng unlocked the cell door and opened it up, the man just flicked his eyes at them and refused to move.

“Hey…you’re not paralyzed or anything, are you?” Bunng asked.

The man shook his head.

“Then get up.”

“Why?”

“Um…because we’re freeing you?”

The man exhaled as he eventually sat up and looked at the goblins while running his fingers along the floor. “You know what…you know what that monster did to me? You know what he did to my wife? My _pregnant_ wife?”

“I don’t care. Get your ass out the cell or we’re leaving you down here,” Groshlar snarled.

Krumvell elbowed Groshlar in the nose so hard he knocked him to the floor. While Bunng and Grovmar checked to make sure his wound didn’t reopen, Krumvell wandered into the cell and started talking to the man.

“I won’t say I know how you feel. I won’t say I’m sorry. I know none of that means anything to you. But don’t think about me. Just think about your wife for a second. When she was still alive, what did you two want?”

“We…we wanted to get out of here…raise our child…”

“Then don’t you think you should abide to her wishes?”

“That was _before_ she…before that ogre cut her open…what child can I raise now?”

Krumvell shrugged. “Make another one.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Yes, it is. Your wife wanted you to escape. She wanted you to raise a child. So walk out this cell and escape. Go find another mate. Go make another child and raise him or her. This isn’t difficult. You’re _making_ it difficult.”

Krumvell didn’t say anything else. He just walked out of the cell and left the door open, not caring very much about whatever decision he decided on. All the goblins headed to the final cell that still had almost half a dozen kids inside. Bunng tried several keys on the cell’s door until he found the right one and unlocked it.

“All right, let’s go kids. You’re free now,” Bunng said.

All of the children stayed in their cells, still shuddering and whimpering as they remained hidden in the corner, almost afraid to move.

“No…the-the monster.”

“He’s gonna eat us, just-just like he did the others!”

Grovmar shook his head. “No, the monster’s dead. You can come out now; it’s safe.”

A blonde-haired kid with dirt all over his face spoke up next. “What…but the-the wyverns outside…are those monsters gone too?”

“No, but the ogre—”

“Then we…we should stay. Maybe-maybe it’ll be safer in here…”

“You’re gonna starve to death if you stay in here.”

The blonde-haired child shook his head. “No…maybe…maybe we can…maybe we can survive down here…”

Grovmar snarled with frustration as he turned away and scowled. He nodded for a moment before he sucked on his teeth and folded his arms.

“Ever heard of a story called _The Monster on the Bridge_?”

All of the children shook their heads.

“No.”

“What’s that about?”

“Is-is there another monster outside, blocking some kind of bridge that’s the exit?”

“It’s a fairly simple story. My mother told me and Groshlar this story all the time. There was this village in the woods. It was secluded, cut off from the rest of the world. They had their own water supply, their own sources of food, their own houses—everything. And they were happy where they were. Thing is, just outside of this village was a bridge. Only one bridge—no roads, no rivers, no other ways to escape this village. And unfortunately, this bridge was blocked by this hellish behemoth with wings, some kind of draconic demon that was several meters tall. Whenever the villagers wandered too close to the bridge, the demon would devour the stragglers, or turn them to ash with his breath. So…the villagers never left their home. They became complacent.”

“Complac…come-what-now?” one child asked.

“They never asked for more. They never _wanted_ more. …Except for one person. A small goblin child. One day, the goblin was able to look across the bridge. And on the other side was this beautiful world full of riches he never seen, food he never tasted, and all sorts of creatures and races he didn’t even know existed. The goblin went and told his friends, who told their parents, who told the village’s council representatives. Eventually, they all banded together, decided that no matter what, they were going to cross that bridge.”

“OOH! Ooh, I know what happens next! The villagers all used the power of teamwork, and together they defeated the demon!”

“No, a lot of them died.”

All of the children frowned. The child who predicted the ending whimpered as her eyes began to water.

“What?”

Grovmar nodded. “Men. Women. Children. The demon…the demon didn’t care. He burned farmers’ fields to the ground. He stomped on women, laughing with glee as their bodies were crushed beneath his feet. And he ate children whole, tearing off their limbs and sucking the blood and flesh from their bones.”

Grovmar paused and exhaled. “But… _eventually_ , the demon was killed. And the villagers who hadn’t died? They finally crossed the bridge. And all of them couldn’t help but cry tears of joy at the discoveries they made. Sure…they took the time to mourn, but in the end, they realized that suffering the wrath of the demon was inevitably worth it.”

“So…the survivors. They all lived happily ever after then?” another child asked.

“No. When they encountered the area across the bridge, they realized that there’s an entire _world_ filled with monsters just as bad as the demon. Monsters that smell bad. Monsters that look like me and you. Monsters that pretend to be good people. All kinds of monsters. And yet, despite all of this…the villagers were happier than ever. They knew what kind of world they lived in, and they chose to see all the joyous things their planet had to offer.”

“But…but the monsters—”

“—Came in from time to time…and they killed more villagers. This book I’m referring to? It has _several_ sequels. And in most of the books, there’s always a monster. And he, she, or it always causes havoc and kills people. By the time our mother told us about the eighth book, all of the original villagers had been killed by that point. I…I broke down crying. Hysterically. I screamed at my mother, ‘what’s the point in you telling us all these stories if there’s always gonna be a monster in them? Why can’t all the villagers just live in peace?’”

Grovmar shrugged. “My mother said, ‘it doesn’t work like that.’ And…and she kept telling me and Groshlar more stories. Sometimes they had good endings. Sometimes they had horrible endings. Sometimes none of the villagers died at all. But they all had a monster in them, some worse than others, some weaker than others. And yet…they always seemed to end with the villagers never regretting that they crossed the bridge. Heh…how ‘bout that.”

Grovmar took a deep breath and rubbed his head. “So. You kids wanna cross the bridge? Or you wanna stay in your village all your life?”

The five children all looked at each other after hearing Grovmar’s story. But ultimately, all of them slowly walked out of the cell. After the children came outside, Grovmar gestured for all of them to follow him back to the cave’s exit. But just as they were about to leave, Krumvell stole the keys from Bunng and started fidgeting with the door full of the dead murids.

“Krum, what are you doing? All those murids are dead,” Bunng pointed out.

“Yeah, and all these prisoners will be too if we don’t mask their scent.”

Bunng and the other goblins remembered how they were splashed with wyvern bait shortly after they were thrown into their cells.

“Shit, you’re right. …Wait, how are those murids gonna help us?”

Krumvell exhaled after he opened up the door. Then he grunted as he started to haul one of the bodies out of the cell. He dropped it down and looked at the bony body before rubbing his nose.

“Erm…well, I know what to do, but it’s not gonna be pleasant. Or fresh-smelling.”

Grovmar raised an eyebrow. “What? You gonna shove your hand up the murids’ asses and smother everyone in shit?”

“Mmmmmmm, close…I’m gonna need something sharp.”

“How sharp?”

“Sharp enough to cut flesh.”

____________________________________

The four goblins all walked outside of the cave, exhaling once they were smelling fresh air once again. While Grovmar, Groshlar, and Bunng all started to walk down the hill, Krumvell looked back into the caves and smiled as he waved for everyone to follow him.

“C’mon! You should be fine!”

Krumvell walked down the hill as well, moments before several humans and the two stilios emerged from the cave, all of whom were smothered in murid blood. A couple of the humans even had some of the intestines wrapped around their necks like necklaces, and were quickly attracting flies. Everyone began to walk down the hill and followed the goblins, occasionally looking up at the sky to make sure that none of the wyverns swooped down to snatch them off the ground. At one point, one of the wyverns even landed on the ground, hissing and growling as it looked at the group of humans wandering away from the cave. The wyvern didn’t even bother leaning down to sniff any of them; it immediately noticed something foul in the air and flew away without interrupting the humans and stilios. Krumvell turned around and looked at the group and smirked.

“See? It worked!”

“Suppose we should be glad we didn’t force ‘em all to rub shit all over themselves,” Groshlar joked.

Bunng exhaled as he looked down at the dirt road he and the other goblins had been traveling on since they began their adventure with Ogrell. He wiped his forehead and sniffed.

“So what now?”

“We head back to Layric Town. Get our payment. Don’t make any stops until we get there,” Grovmar answered.

“It’s that simple?”

Grovmar nodded. “That simple.”

Bunng scoffed. “After everything we’ve been through this past week, do you really think we’re gonna get back to Layric Town _that_ easily?”

“It’s _because_ we’ve been through so much shit that I don’t expect anything else to happen.”


	9. Don’t Go On Another Adventure

The four goblins waited impatiently as they stood inside of the small building, watching as a balding human being wearing glasses scribbled various notes inside of his oversized notebook. Grovmar cleared his throat as he looked around the building, surprised that the place didn’t belong to some kind of historian. The building only had two windows—both of which were hidden by teak shutters—and there was dust all over the tables and some of the wooden chairs. No one accompanied the old man except for a powerhouse of a minotaur carrying an axe whose horns nearly touched the ceiling. Krumvell looked at the bipedal, bull-like creature, staring at his big nostrils and his rigid muscles that were bulging from his chest down to his legs. The minotaur looked down at Krumvell and snorted so hard the red-bearded goblin nearly felt the hot air against his face. He backed away from the bovine; it was best if he didn’t antagonize him.

“So,” the old man said, “you rescued _five_ children? Not a dozen?”

“As the survivors told you, Ogrell Syn’Gorrsh ate the rest,” Bunng informed the man.

“Mm-hmm. I don’t suppose you have concrete evidence of this?”

“No, dumbass. All the ‘evidence’ came out the ogre’s ass and plopped on the ground or in his pants,” Groshlar rudely commented.

“It’s still evidence.”

Grovmar rolled his eyes. “The authorities spoke to the survivors. You saw them yourself. We saved _nine_ people—seven of whom were humans. Five of them were kids! And on top of that, we almost got killed ourselves! We deserve to be compensated.”

“Yes, I suppose so. Look, we are all very grateful for your efforts—”

“No, no, no, no—skip all that,” Krumvell interrupted. “Don’t patronize us.”

The old man raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, I know what that word means. I don’t care what you think about us. I don’t care if you think we _somehow_ are behind the whole thing. We saved almost a dozen innocent people. We killed a monstrous excuse of a person who committed cannibalism and ate the flesh of other sentient races simply because he wanted to. Some of the people we saved were the missing kids on one of the contracts on the board outside. The reward was ten thousand platinum coins. So give us money. There’s nothing else that needs to be said.”

The old man sniffed. “The contract specified. It said a dozen children. That means twelve. You _can_ count, right?”

Krumvell held up all the fingers on his left hand. “How many fingers is this? Last I checked, it’s five. That’s five kids who _aren’t_ dead because of us!”

Krumvell gritted his teeth and clenched his hand into a fist. “Now how many fingers am I holding up? This is how many kids would be alive if we sat on our asses and did nothing!”

“Five does not equal twelve. Five is a lower number than twelve. Five isn’t even _half_ of twelve. Last time _I_ checked, seven is a bigger number. That’s the number of parents who no longer have any children.”

The old man sniffed as he looked back down into his book and resumed scribbling notes. “So as far as I can tell, I see no reason why any of you should be rewarded.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Krumvell snarled.

The minotaur looked back down at Krumvell and snorted. “Do not raise your voice at Mr. Tolrik.”

Groshlar walked up to Mr. Tolrik’s table and snarled audibly. “Give us. Our fucking. _Money_.”

Mr. Tolrik shook his head. “I’ve recorded all I need to know. Now shoo. You’re starting to stink up my office.”

Groshlar gritted his teeth and murmured to himself. The other three goblins could see that the minotaur was already reaching for his weapon and looked around the room for some kind of weapon to use. Grovmar subtly backed away towards one of the tables that had a heavy book on it while Bunng looked at the minotaur’s crotch. 

“Did you not hear me? I said—”

He was on the table in under a second. Groshlar slammed the book and pen on the floor, and then roared viciously as he jumped up and threw himself on top of Mr. Tolrik, grabbing his throat and choking him while the minotaur raised his axe. Before he could strike, Bunng punched the minotaur in his groin, and then Grovmar tossed the book at the bovine’s head. It bounced off his skull, causing the beast to shout and drop his axe. He bent down to pick it up.

“TOUCH IT AND I’LL SNAP HIS NECK!” Groshlar bellowed.

The minotaur stopped and backed away. Meanwhile, Groshlar panted heavily in the old man’s face, watching as he whimpered and shuddered.

“L-look, look, there’s no need—”

“SHUT UP! You’re gonna sit on your wrinkly ass and listen to me! And if you interrupt me once, I’m gonna rip out your tongue! You understand?!”

Mr. Tolrik nodded. “Yes—ACK! YES!”

“Good! Now then…this entire week has been nothing but bullshit after bullshit for us! I nearly got swallowed by a dragon with horrendous breath, my brother almost got killed by an idiotic man, we almost got devoured by wyverns, both of my friends accidentally killed someone, we had to follow a gaseous ogre around who intentionally shat himself, got drugged, got kidnapped, got imprisoned inside of a cave, got fed _human_ flesh, and to top all that off, when we finally got outside the cave, I got shot with a fuckin’ arrow!”

Groshlar took several deep breaths before he exhaled and started to calm down. “I’m not gonna sit here and say I haven’t done anything wrong—”

“Well, no shit. You killed an innocent man because he used us for target practice,” Grovmar pointed out.

“I killed an idiotic man!”

“You killed an innocent idiotic man, simply because you were acting impulsive.”

“I was being protective of you!”

“You were acting impulsively protective. My point still stands.”

“SHUT UP! I don’t see you bitching about how Bunng accidentally killed a scientist, or how Krumvell accidentally fed a poisonous mushroom to a baker!”

Bunng held up a finger. “Okay, those weren’t on purpose. Soooooooo kinda doesn’t count.”

“DOESN’T MATTER!”

Groshlar huffed and faced Mr. Tolrik again. “See, there ya go. We’re all directly—or indirectly, Bunng and Krumvell—responsible for killing three people. And I don’t give a flying fuck.”

Groshlar paused for a long moment, letting some of the anger release from his body. He finally let go of Mr. Tolrik’s throat and hopped off his body, sitting down on the table and huffing.

“I’m not a saint. None of us are. Frankly, I don’t _want_ to be saint. I shouldn’t have to be a saint just to do all the shit I want. Sure, yeah, I’m a faggot, and so is my brother, and so are my two friends. And sure, maybe we don’t care about hygiene, and we commit lewd acts in public, and steal money and food when we need to. And y’know what? That’s just fuckin’ fine. Because there are people out there who are horrid monsters. People who kidnap innocents so they can rape them for weeks, and then leave their mutilated corpses on display. People who murder their entire families because they’re sociopaths who got fed up with living with others. People who start wars and watch as thousands of men, women, and children are butchered and nations are torn apart because the soldiers they control are too blind to stop and ask their superiors _why_ they’re fighting. People…people like Ogrell Syn’Gorrsh, who kidnapped several innocents—children included—and either ate them, forced them to eat each other, or forced them all to starve to death.”

Groshlar took a long breath and shook his head. “At the end of the day, people need to realize that this world is _filled_ with people like me and my brother and my friends. But the world also has people like Ogrell Syn’Gorrsh in it. And as far as I know? I don’t deserve _any_ of your fuckin’ judgment! Because if you had to choose between someone like me, or someone like Ogrell Syn’Gorrsh, I bet your ass that every single man, woman, and child would get down on the floor and kiss my feet, and praise me as if I _were_ a saint!”

Having finished his long speech, Groshlar took another deep breath and ran a hand through his hair.

“So. Bottom line? You’re gonna fuckin’ pay us. _Right now_.”

_______________________________

The four goblins all walked outside of the building carrying a hefty bag full of platinum coins. Bunng chuckled as he looked inside of his bag and grinned widely.

“Oh gods, sixteen hundred platinum coins! I don’t think we’ve ever gotten this much before!”

Groshlar scoffed. “He should’ve paid us the full ten thousand.”

“Well, we _did_ kill three people. And we only rescued five children, not twelve,” Grovmar commented.

“Yeah, Grosh, stop bitching for once and just be happy we finally got paid!” Krumvell said.

Groshlar huffed. “Fine, fine. …I mean we could use all these coins to head to a new town.”

Grovmar looked around in Layric Town and spotted one of the inns. “Yes. That is something we _could_ do.”

Grovmar smirked as he looked at the inn and gestured towards it. He also gestured towards the town’s brothel, which catered to both heterosexuals and homosexuals. The other three goblins grinned as well as they shook their heavy bags.

_____________________________

Flies. That was always the first sound that woke him up. No matter where he went or where he and the other goblins slept, it always seemed to be the flies that woke him up. Grovmar’s eyes gradually opened up, and he slowly moaned as he moved his arms and legs. When he wiped some of the sleep from his eyes and slowly got up, he realized that he was sleeping on the floor of one of the inn’s bedrooms. Even better, there were at least four other creatures—a minotaur, two humans, and an orc—all lying on the floor, unconscious and naked. The goblin moaned as he gradually stood up. He slowly opened his large mouth and yawned, showing off his nasty yellow teeth and his slobbery tongue inside. Grovmar grunted after stretching and set his arms at his side, moments before he looked to his left and spotted Groshlar standing near a wall and holding his penis. It wasn’t until he heard a noisy splashing sound that he realized Groshlar was urinating on the floor. Groshlar exhaled after finishing, before he reached backwards and slapped his right buttock so hard it jiggled slightly. Then he looked over his shoulder and grinned.

“You likin’ the view?”

“Fuck off,” Grovmar snarled, rubbing his eyes again.

“Hey. Least we ain’t in the trash.”

Grovmar nodded and smirked. He dragged his tired feet against the floor, wincing and panting, his anus sore after the events from last night. Somehow, Grovmar found his brown wool shirt and blue trousers and put them back on. He exhaled after getting dressed, shortly before he looked around the bedroom and could see Bunng and Krumvell already putting on their clothes. Bunng grunted as he looked at his hands and could see that they felt dried and crusty. He smacked his lips a few times and grimaced.

“Ugh…hey…hey, Krumvell?”

Krumvell finished putting on his stained white shirt and blue shorts before he walked over to Bunng.

“What is it mate?”

“Which…which one of us licked the orc’s asshole?”

Krumvell chuckled as he backed away and plugged his nose. “ _Definitely_ you, Bunng!”

Bunng groaned as he shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“ _Fuck_.”

“Hey, you begged for it. I got the two humans! Guess they didn’t mind taking me at the same time.”

While Bunng and Krumvell were both recalling last night’s erotic episodes, Grovmar panicked when he felt around his pants, unsure of where his bag of coins were.

“Oh shit…shit. Guys! WHERE’S OUR MONEY?!”

“Under the bed,” Bunng said, before yawning. “That much I _do_ remember.”

Panicking, Grovmar swiftly threw himself beneath two of the beds and pulled out four money bags. He exhaled with relief.

“Oh thank fuck…”

“Yeah. Figured one of these guys would try to steal some, so I hid ‘em.”

“How much we got left?” Groshlar asked.

Grovmar opened his money bag and started counting some of the coins. “Uhhhh…I dunno? Fifty, sixty…”

“Should be two hundred. We all agreed to split it, ‘member?” Krumvell said.

“So that’s…eight hundred coins left?”

“Erm…” Krumvell scratched the back of his head. “Seven hundred and fifty. Think it’s only fair that I leave some coins so the staff here can, y’know, clean up.”

The other three goblins looked around the room and grimaced a few times. Four naked males were on the floor, all of whom were stinking of dried sweat and semen. Blotches of dried-up pre-ejaculate and regular ejaculate were staining the bed sheets, and the floor. Groshlar just finished peeing all over the floor, and judging from the stench and the flies, someone must’ve defecated in the corner of the room at some point. Grovmar looked up at the ceiling and his eyes widened with disgust. There was a blotch of semen up there too. He immediately turned to look at Groshlar and stammered, while Groshlar meekly scratched his nape.

“Groshlar.”

“Mm?”

“That’s the _ceiling_.”

“I know what the fuck it is.”

_______________________________

The four goblins, now fully awake and clothed, exited the inn and started to wander around the streets of Layric Town again. All of them started to look inside the sacks full of money, checking once again to make sure the coins were indeed real. Once all of them finished examining all of the coins, they resumed exploring Layric Town once again. All of the goblins passed by the wooden board full of contracts again, and Grovmar stopped for a moment as he turned and looked at it.

“So, where now?” Krumvell asked.

Bunng shrugged. “Dunno. We could try heading to Erelorn. Got enough coins to get there, maybe even find a place to stay for a few—”

“Hey, guys? Hold up a second,” Grovmar stated.

The three goblins all stopped walking and turned around to look at Grovmar. They regrouped with him as he kept staring at the board full of all the contracts.

“What’s up?” Bunng asked.

“There’s more contracts up here.”

“Yes, we can see that,” Groshlar said, rolling his eyes. “So what?”

As Grovmar turned around, he took another deep breath before looking over at the other three goblins. “Let’s take another one.”

Groshlar gritted his teeth, while Krumvell and Bunng looked at him with wide eyes.

“Just—listen…listen to me. I know what you’re thinking. But I feel like we have to do this.”

Grovmar huffed and shook his head. “This whole time I’ve been trying to lead this group, and what the hell has it gotten us? We meander around until we find a town, fuck, shit, eat, sleep, and then we do it all over again. When was the last time we stayed anywhere for longer than a week? When was the last time we actually tried _living_ somewhere?”

“But we have all this money _now_. We can find a place to live now,” Bunng pointed out. 

“For how long? Maybe until autumn. Then what? We meander around again, with winter approaching? We can’t keep doing this! We can’t just wander around hoping for good shit to happen to us! We can’t keep getting ‘lucky,’ because that’ll only take us so far!”

“So how will taking these contracts change anything?” Groshlar asked.

“We didn’t steal this money. We _earned_ it. It’s _ours_. We saved people…people who respect us now. We got a monster who dared to call himself a ‘person’ killed, and now he won’t harm anyone else ever again. Don’t you see? If we take more contracts like the fake one Ogrell put up, this’ll make our lives better, more stable. We’ll finally be able to find some decent place to live. People won’t look at us like we’re a bunch of trash-eating cretins. And we’ll earn lots more money in the process! This…this is the best option for us.”

Groshlar snorted. “Sure, right. Or maybe you just care about the money.”

Grovmar glared at his brother. “Don’t you wanna cross the bridge, Groshlar? Don’t _all_ of you wanna cross it? We already killed the monster; the bridge is wide open for us. And sure…I can guarantee all of you, once we cross that bridge, there’s gonna be another monster. And another after that. And another after that. But won’t it be worth it? Isn’t it worth facing another monster so we can see the rest of this world, outside of Glordale?”

“To be fair, Thurrgar died fighting this ‘monster’ you speak of,” Bunng pointed out.

“Thurrgar died because he was a fucking idiot!” Grovmar snarled. “What happened to _us_ when we encountered Ogrell? Sure, we all nearly died. Sure, you got sick, Bunng, and you’re probably gonna walk with a limp for another month. And Groshlar almost died protecting me. But my point still stands. In the end, we got paid, we rescued innocent people, and that’s one less ‘monster’ terrorizing villagers.”

Grovmar exhaled as he rubbed his forehead. “Look. I won’t force any of you to do this. I want it to be unanimous; we _all_ have to agree on something here. If you all want to keep traveling from place to place and never finding a home to settle in, that’s fine. If you wanna try to live off the coins we have now, that’s fine. But if you wanna take these contracts—”

“I wanna do this,” Krumvell suddenly said.

Everyone looked at the green goblin with surprise. “Wait, seriously? I thought you wanted to build a house in the country? Why the sudden change?” Grovmar asked.

Krumvell blinked. “I mean it’s…it’s not that difficult to figure out. Everyone wants to be a farmer, or a gardener, or an artist or author. Everyone just wants to have a normal, simple life. Those…those children we rescued, what was the most complex thing they had to worry about? How to read and write? How to plant crops? How you need to make sure you don’t drink too much water at night so you don’t piss yourself in your sleep?”

Krumvell shook his head and shuddered. “That old man, Mr. Tolrik. He said there were _twelve_ kids. We only saved five. So…so seven kids whose primary concern was to figure out how to pronounce ‘meticulous’ properly are all dead. And given Ogrell, he probably made them suffer. He just…”

Krumvell paused and looked away for a moment. He gritted his teeth and felt his eyes watering, to a point where he couldn’t keep his tears held in. The goblin sniffled as he looked back at his friends with two tears running down his face.

“I’m tired of this,” he sobbed. “I’m…I’m tired of everything being complicated. I’m tired of this world being complicated. But now I see…I see that other people…they don’t even have the chance to live a normal, carefree life _because_ of people like Ogrell, people who take satisfaction in destroying lives that never interfered with their own. And I…I can’t just sit on my ass letting this world turn to shit any longer.”

Krumvell sniffled and wiped his eyes. “So if I have to make my life complicated, so other people with simple lives can _continue_ living simple lives, then fuck it.”

Krumvell nodded. “Let’s do it.”

Grovmar smiled as he stared at Krumvell, shortly before he turned and looked at Bunng and Groshlar. “What about you two?”

Bunng snorted. “You three didn’t see all the shit I saw when I was following Ogrell. You didn’t hear when Ogrell smashed a girl’s head in, and then started gouging out her eyeball. And you also didn’t see a priest nailed to a wall who had been forced to eat human flesh thinking he’d be able to go free if he followed Ogrell’s orders. And it’s…you wanna know what I was thinking about when I saw all these people getting murdered and tortured?”

“What?” Krumvell asked.

“‘I can’t believe our biggest problem before now was that we didn’t want to sleep in the trash.’”

Bunng shrugged. “Groshlar made it very clear that there are other people out there who are far, _far_ worse than we are. And after what I’ve seen and heard in the cave, now I know there are people out there in much more pain and turmoil than us. So I’m with Krumvell. Maybe this’ll make our lives more complicated, but screw it. It’ll be worth it in the end.”

As Krumvell, Bunng, and Grovmar all smiled at each other, Groshlar stared at the group and exhaled noisily, waiting until the three of them paid more attention to him.

“You gonna fight us on this one?” Grovmar asked.

Groshlar shook his head. “No. I agree actually. We should do more of these contracts.”

Grovmar chuckled as he walked over to Groshlar. “Are you sure you didn’t hit your head inside Ogrell’s cave at some point?”

“Piss off. Yeah, sure, I wanna help you three do these contracts. I also wanna kill people.”

Everyone’s smiles dropped. “U-um…what?” Krumvell asked.

“You three all heard me. I want to kill people. Hmph…you all heard my little rant in that old twat’s building. You should understand. I couldn’t stop thinking of all the ways to eradicate that fat fuck Ogrell. My only regret is that I wasn’t the one to take Ogrell’s life. Some wyverns did. But that doesn’t change anything…like you said, Grov, there’s more monsters over the bridge. And you know what? I’ll gladly cross it, just so I can run into more assholes like Ogrell and personally cut their throats open.”

“Well…all right then,” Krumvell said, feeling both uncomfortable and disturbed.

“But why? Since when do you care about other people who aren’t us?” Bunng asked.

“First of all, one of the reasons why I wanna do this? So I can tell twats like Mr. Tolrik to fuck off. Repeatedly. So I can walk up to their faces and say, ‘yeah, I’m a cock-sucking self-serving faggot who swears all the time and doesn’t even try to bathe. But this faggot is the one who took down a murderous sociopath, and a manipulative cunt who used innocent people to commit horrific crimes, and a disgusting beast who kidnaps people and turns them into slaves and rapes them.’ And they’re all gonna look at me, and none of ‘em are gonna say a goddamn word. And when I tell ‘em to bend over and kiss my ass, they’re gonna do it.”

“So what’s the other reason?” Krumvell asked.

Groshlar turned and faced the green goblin. “You’re wrong, Krum. No matter what you do, you ain’t gonna change the world. World’s shitty. Always has been. Always will be. Four puny-ass goblins can’t do anything to change the overall outcome of how this world operates. And you know that.”

Groshlar paused and let out hot breath, shortly before he sucked on his teeth. “But, y’know, maybe if…maybe if I seek out and kill people like Ogrell, then perhaps this world will be _less_ shitty. It’s always gonna be shitty. _Always_. But there’s no reason why it can’t be tolerably shitty to a point where everyone knows they’re sleeping in shit, and they’re happy nonetheless.”

Krumvell chuckled and smirked at Groshlar. “So you wanna turn the whole world into Glordale, basically?”

The muscular goblin shrugged. “Hey. I didn’t see someone getting raped or murdered every other day in every town we’ve come across since we’ve been here. Rather nice country to live in. You just gotta get used to the stench.”

Groshlar finally finished talking and sniffed, while Grovmar looked at the other goblins surrounding him and smiled now that they finally came to a decision that everyone agreed on. Grovmar turned around and looked at the sheets of yellow paper on the board once everyone finished giving their speeches,

“Okay, well, which contract do you all wanna take on next?”

Krumvell shrugged. “I say pick one randomly.”

Grovmar reached up and took one of the contracts off the board. “Okay…hmm. ‘Name: Marison Keynard. Race: Human. Job: Need help finding lost sheep. Location: Blue house near the cemetery in Layric Town. Payment: 5 bronze coins.’”

“You’re shitting me right?” Bunng asked.

Grovmar tore the page in half and tossed it aside. “Ehhhhh, that one doesn’t count.”

The younger Grollear brother reached up and grabbed a second contract, this one written in red ink.

“Ooh, that one looks nice!” Krumvell said.

Grovmar read the message aloud. “‘Name: Tuvvyn Torrskul. Race: Imp. Job: Need dead bodies delivered to satisfy necrophilia tendencies’ aaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnd I’m putting this back up.”

Grovmar quickly hung up the contract with disgust while Groshlar scratched his head.

“What? So some imp wants to talk to the dead. So what?”

“He said ‘necrophilia,’ not ‘necromancy,’” Bunng pointed out.

“Is there a difference?”

“A fairly big one, yes!”

Sighing, Grovmar gestured for Krumvell to come over. “Here, help me get up to the contract on the top.”

“All right.”

Krumvell walked up to the board and crouched down, while Grovmar stood on his shoulders. Grunting and shutting his eyes, Krumvell raised his body so Grovmar would be high enough to snatch the contract from the board. Once he grabbed it, he jumped off Krumvell’s shoulders and read it.

“‘Name: Svollard Henrrnyk. Race: Stilio. Job: Must find and ‘deal with’ five cold-hearted mercenaries in Tovvol. Location: Small decrepit abandoned dungeon north of Layric Town. Payment: 500 gold coins. Will provide more details, weapons, and transport to Tovvol.’”

“Huh…that’s an odd contract,” Krumvell said.

“Yeah, that’s clear across the country! It’ll take us a week to get there!” Bunng said.

“Maybe this stilio has a dragon. Who knows? It said he’ll provide transport and weapons. Could be legit. Plus, Grosh, it says ‘deal with.’ I’m sure we can all figure out what that means,” Grovmar explained.

“Good,” Groshlar said. “So these mercenaries must’ve killed this lizard’s family or something.”

“I don’t know,” Krumvell said, scratching his head. “Helping people solve problems is one thing. This sounds like we have to kill someone.”

“They’re mercenaries. They work for money and nothing else; they don’t care if innocents get caught in the crossfire. I’m not gonna lose any sleep if this Svollard fellow wants us to kill them,” Groshlar responded.

“Let-let’s worry about all of that later,” Grovmar explained. “If anything seems off, we’ll call off the contract and do something else.”

“After we go to Tovvol?” Groshlar asked.

“ _After_ we go to Tovvol and spend a night there. ‘Sides, if we back out and Svollard is pissed about it, we’ll give him some of our coins as compensation. For now? Someone is offering to take us to Tovvol _for free_. You know what that means, right?” Grovmar asked.

“Lots of different cuisines to feast on, most of ‘em probably fish-based?” Krumvell asked.

“Lots of new races to run into, new places to explore, new weapons and items to buy?” Bunng asked.

“Bah, fuck all that! Tovvol’s built by the sea! Lots of hairy, chubby, muscular, smelly pirates and sailors who are just _dying_ to have their cocks drained!” Groshlar exclaimed, while grinning widely.

Grovmar chuckled. “Exactly. I fail to see any downsides to this.”

“Well then. No point in standing here gabbing about it. Let’s get going!” Bunng shouted excitedly.

The four goblins started to head north of Layric Town, hoping that they’d be able to find Svollard’s location within a short amount of time and head to Tovvol as soon as possible. As the goblins walked through the small town, Krumvell scratched his head with bewilderment.

“Sooooo about that whole meaning of the necrophilia thing?” he asked.

“Krum. It’s best if you go your entire life never hearing that word again,” Grovmar answered.

“That bad, huh?”

“That bad.”

Krumvell scratched his head again. “Huh. Ah well then.”

While the bearded goblin was still confused over the word, as far as he was concerned, it didn’t matter much now. So he shrugged and kept on walking alongside the others. Grovmar turned and noticed the pile of trash that he, his brother, and his friends were sleeping in not too long ago. Maybe he was imagining things, but the pile seemed smaller now, and there were no goblins sifting through it for food. After gazing at the garbage for a moment, he turned and stared at his brother and friends for a while. Groshlar turned and looked at Grovmar, raising his eyebrow when he noticed his brother’s smile.

“What?”

Grovmar looked at his brother and two friends, amazed that all three of them were still alive and fully intact, short of a few wounds. He looked away from them and chuckled.

“Nothing.”


End file.
